> When I joined the team the first project I had was to swap old machines that were being retired for new machines. There were no tools or automation to do this, I was given a spreadsheet with server names.
Writing a program to store a list of servers to be swapped instead of keeping them in a spreadsheet sounds a bit like buying a brewery when you want to drink 1 beer.
Program used by a team of one sounds like over-engineering.
This spreadsheet was, from the OPs narrative, the master-list used by the whole operations team. An operations team that is now reduced to "ashes" - therefore not a bad idea at all to have your server inventory centralized.
Writing a program to store a list of servers to be swapped instead of keeping them in a spreadsheet sounds a bit like buying a brewery when you want to drink 1 beer. Program used by a team of one sounds like over-engineering.