I love automation. But I've seen teams spend three months building an Airflow pipeline for a task that could have been a cron job and a bash script.
A Simple Decision Framework
How often does it run? How complex is the logic? What happens if it fails silently? Daily + linear + non-critical = cron. Frequent + branching + needs retries = orchestrator.
The Tool Spectrum
Cron + scripts → Task queues (Celery, Bull) → Workflow orchestrators (Airflow, Temporal) → No-code (n8n, Zapier). Match tool to actual complexity.
When Airflow Makes Sense
10+ interconnected workflows, complex dependency chains, SLA requirements, backfilling needs, and a team to maintain it. Fewer than 3 of these? You're over-engineering.
My Rules of Thumb
Start simple, migrate when pain is real. Document the manual process first. Always build in monitoring — the worst automation fails silently for weeks.