Wade Mealing has an interesting article on using org-babel for the analysis of Linux kernel bugs. Mealing is a Red Hat engineer and involved with tracking down problems in the Linux kernel. He has a more-or-less fixed procedure for doing this that is captured with Org-mode. The skeleton of the Org file is set with a template ensuring that he doesn’t forget anything and that the solutions to any past problems with the format of the file are carried forward.
His process reminds me of Howard Abrams’ Literate DevOps process (post, video) in that they both use an Org Babel file to capture both a narrative about the issue as well as the (executable) commands used to investigate/fix/implement whatever problem is being addressed.
Mealing’s problem is that each problem he investigates is tied to a particular Red Hat release and version so things like the file locations and build parameters vary between problems. Using a standard Org file helps him track all this, set the parameters once, and have their values propagated throughout the file automatically.
This is another great example of how you can use Emacs Org-mode and Babel to capture repetitive processes and, at the same time, document them, and make them exactly reproducible. It’s beneficial even for personal use. When you investigate how to do something complicated, you can document it as well as make what is in essence a script to repeat the process when the need arises again.