Even when stressing the importance of automation and educating your stakeholders on its importance, you might need to take action without official approval. Many software projects have started as a skunkworks project that a sole developer worked on without official approval. A developer can also work on a deployment pipeline automation task on his local machine or an unused machine if need be.
Getting approval for CI/CD from your stakeholders
Starting a skunkworks project
The origins of the term skunkworks project is open for debate, but the general idea is that it is a project that is worked on in secret by a select individual or select individuals that is intended to bring innovation and change to an organization. It is...