Manual vs Auto Sync

Hi we've had F5s in our organisation for a while now. Just recently we've developed some automation scripts that use the REST interface to the LTM module. Our problem is that our F5 HA pairs are currently manually synced. We'd like to turn on auto sync so that we can fully automate our changes but there has been some resistance within the organisation.

My questions are...

1. What are other people doing in this situation?
2. Is auto sync viewed as an evolution of the F5 capability or just another feature available for use where appropriate?
3. What barriers are there to transitioning from manual to auto sync?