Yes absolutely! But even when things work perfectly, different people will prefer different types of automation.
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I have mine open my garage but with many checks before doing so. Itās nice to get home in my car or bike, and have the garage just open as I approach. Itās only allowed if my car or bike is out of the garage, between times Iād ever be out, and when my phone arrives and the house is unarmed and wife or kids are present. Iāve had it open once unintentionally and that was due to a weird issue with life360 and a sensor glitch that happened at the wrong time, but due to the checks I was home so it was a nearly non issue. Plus Iām alerted via text whenever it opens or closes, and it auto closes liberally.
As to the vertical vs horizontal regarding HA growth, I always had a master plan. Didnāt realize Iād hit it so quick, but my answer is based on ultimate plan not status. I learned within about 3 days of getting my st hub what my goal would be. Obviously we are a special lot in this universe, but I bet anyone replying here follows a similar mental path.
An anonymous poll would skew Mikeās intent I think. More people would respond with possibly less thought out answers.
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From my POV being new to HA when I setup ST, it took me some time to wrap my head around what could be done.
As technical as I am, I intuitively had no concept of what could be done, or even what I wanted to automate!
When new to HA, we have no concept of anything other than a dumb house, remote control of XYZ, sure we all get that, and have gotten that since we picked up our first remoteā¦
As we know, thatās not automation.
What first started me to expand my view portal, was thinking in terms of fixing stuff that pissed me off (ridiculous light switch locations), automating repetitive tasks (turning lights on and off), that sort of thing.
Once I got to a certain device density (mostly sensors), there is no lack if ideas, nor the devices required to perform them, my constraints are solely in the time required to implementā¦
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For me, the plan has always been about immediate use and budget. Problems that I need to solve now, if I can afford to.
I know a lot of people work a room at a time, and that makes a lot of sense. In my case, though, itās just about the actual problem being solved. If having one voice operated fixture in a room that has three gives me enough automation to solve the āVoice control of lightsā need for that room, I often just do the one.
I also laid out my phase 1 budget in advance ($1500 for stuff that I would be willing to completely replace two years after I started), with a pretty good idea of what my phase 2 budget was going to be as well. And that has shaped a lot of my decisions.
I detailed this whole process in my project report, so I wonāt spend anymore time on it here. 
Oh, and I agree with Mike ā ā I didnāt have a good idea of what would become my eventual top priorities. Voice control barely existed when I started, and now itās a big deal. The smart watch changed a lot of things for me as well. I had a detection need I thought would be solved by geopresence and turned out not to be, but I beacons became a good substitute. So thereās also been a lot of learning as I go along.
One more thing ā ā one year in I completely changed my priority list and put reliability at the absolute top. I found I was willing to give up features to get that, in part because it was costing me a lot of money to have someone else do all the fiddly maintenance.
Iāve seen other people go completely the other way. They start out saying that reliability is one of their top priorities, but then they find that versatility is important enough that theyāre willing to do a lot of handholding on the system and put up with occasional glitches.
So I think one of the other things that we learn once we actually have home automation installed is what our own tolerance for glitches is. 
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Automation=have something happen without me thinking about it. All the smart stuff in the world doesnāt lead to automation without glue. ST is like gorilla glue! My entire approach after day three was āWhy am I doing this? Why isnāt the house?ā Having manual control is great but not the intent.
I see a lot of new folks on here asking how to do something simple, manually. They arenāt ready to answer this posts question. After a week they probably will be, assuming they get into CoRE (RIP RM) or even Smart Lighting. Even the basic shm and routines can get this mind set rolling, but most newbs wonāt wrap their mind around it immediately. That is not a bad thing either. Small steps allows you to better understand the composite pieces so your future self will have a better understanding of the crazy crap you can do.
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My 16 year old just called me a barbarian. He had to turn on a light switch manually.
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In other words, size doesnāt matter, itās how you use itā¦ errr, the network, I meanā¦ 
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