I also independently stumbled on this idea. My rational was that it turns the process into more of a checklist, without all of the hassle of handling edge cases

I also independently stumbled on this idea. My rational was that it turns the process into more of a checklist, without all of the hassle of handling edge cases in my code. Because usually whenever I try to fully automate I re-learn the wisdom of that xkcd cartoon about "automation expectations versus reality". Another wise thing about it is that it's a relatively low-friction way to start documenting institutional knowledge. Your engineers might hate writing docs, but maybe they won't mind writing a bash script like this. Which is essentially documentation in disguise. And since it's (presumably) living with the rest of your version control system you increase the chances that your engineers will explain changes to the process over time (via commit logs).