01 / Vision
What better outcome becomes possible?
Name who benefits, what improves for them, and which tradeoffs matter. Include outcomes that today’s workflow cannot deliver.
Durable design for value delivery
Keep the outcome clear.
Let the workflow evolve.
By Curtis Hibbs and Joshua Barnes
AI capabilities keep changing. So anchor the work in a clear purpose, explicit boundaries, and evidence that your changes serve that purpose.
Effective Enterprise AI is a body of work on how people and AI can deliver better outcomes together. Start with the value someone needs. Rethink how the work gets done. Let feedback show what to keep, change, or stop.
Explore the approach
The whole delivery system
Design beyond the individual task.
A faster task can move the delay into someone else’s queue. A useful result can still create costly review or rework. The recipient receives or uses a step’s output. The customer is the person or organization whose outcome the whole flow serves. So examine how an improvement for the immediate recipient contributes to that outcome.
Sometimes the right change is AI assistance within an existing workflow. Sometimes the workflow needs redesign. And sometimes AI makes a worthwhile outcome possible for the first time. Choose the simplest arrangement that works.
02 / Path
What should change first?
Choose a bounded change within your authority. Identify dependencies. Decide what evidence would justify continuing, revising, or stopping.
03 / Means
What will make it work?
Design the roles of people, AI, information, and tools, and build in ownership, evaluation, recovery, and feedback.
These perspectives inform one another: experience with the work can change the path and reveal a better vision.
Two tests of effectiveness
Test the work.
Then test the value.
The workflow test
Was the result acceptable within the boundaries of authorized work?
Examine quality, correctness, permissions, resource use, and recoverability as needed.
The value-delivery test
How did it contribute to the customer’s outcome?
Evaluate the local outcome for the immediate recipient, whoever receives or uses the step’s output. Then examine how that outcome connects to the customer’s outcome. Look at waiting, downstream review, rework, cost, and other consequences. If the connection isn’t established yet, say so.
Passing the workflow test is evidence, but it does not establish end-to-end improvement, because local usefulness does not. Experience from recipients and customers helps test whether you are measuring the right things. And some evidence arrives later.
Put the idea to work
Start with one bounded workflow.
Choose work with manageable consequences. Before changing it, state the intended improvement and the conditions that must hold.
Name the recipient and the customer.
What should improve for the immediate recipient? How would that improvement contribute to the customer’s outcome?
Find the boundaries and the people who own them.
What must be protected? Who depends on the current arrangement? Who can authorize a change?
Try a bounded change and examine its effects.
Compare the result with the current approach. Then keep, revise, or stop the change, based on evidence from the work and its recipients.
A developing body of knowledge
Principles that can be questioned.
Practices that can be tested.
Durable design means changing how work runs without losing purpose or control. Outcomes and constraints can change too, but those changes should be deliberate and traceable.
The Knowledge Base holds the reusable concepts, practices, evidence, and limits. Articles on the Effective Enterprise AI LinkedIn Page take up particular arguments and applications.
The approach is under development. Its usefulness must be demonstrated in bounded cases, with observations distinguished from hypotheses.
Our sister site
Applied End-to-End Flow
Applied End-to-End Flow brings together a framework, knowledge base, and book series for improving end-to-end value delivery. Its approach examines the whole system of work and addresses what affects flow and feedback, to improve customer outcomes.