ARTICLES · DUE DILIGENCE, ON US
Read the guides before you commit.
Decision guides and engineering notes on choosing, scoping, building and running AI systems that keep working in daily operations, long after launch.
- Read guides to choosing and building useful AI systems.
- Explore the engineering work behind reliable operation.
- Test a proposal before you commit budget or people to it.
Strategy
You Are Approving A Build Nobody Has Checked
The proposal has a number, a timeline and a team who believe in it. Most AI projects are lost in that room, because nobody independent has checked the decision it changes, the data it runs on, or the systems it must plug into.
The Control Your Auditor Cannot Re-Perform
A control that is a person's check may run every time and still fail an audit, because nobody can re-perform it. Design the evidence into the system from the start, captured at the moment of each action, with its reasoning attached.
Turning A Crowd's Questions Into A Few Answers
A flood of audience questions is really a handful of real questions in disguise. The cost of grouping them into five or so umbrella questions, continuously, as new ones arrive, decides whether the summary is worth running.
Which Service Workflow Deserves Your First AI Investment
Compare operational consequence, system access and adoption before funding an AI workflow, with the evidence written beside each answer. The most useful first investment solves a problem your team can act on today.
Three Tests Before Anyone Starts Building
Readiness is not enthusiasm, and it is not feasibility. It is whether a stranger can grade the target, the systems can be reached today, and one person can change the target tomorrow, all checked before any budget moves.
Your Routing Decisions Run On Last Week's Numbers
Nothing looks broken. Your team still produces defensible answers from last week's numbers, and margin leaks out of the routes nobody had the time to re-price. Here is when routing becomes an AI problem, and where to start.
What To Demand From Whoever Owns Your System
Handing a live system to one accountable person outside your payroll works only if you hold them to a demanding bar; otherwise you have bought a single point of failure. Here is that bar, and how to check it before you sign.
Your First Quarter As Chief Operating Officer
A new operations leader has a short window in which to make changes, and less information than anyone who reports to them. Turn the operating review into a focused software priority your team has the capacity to deliver.
The Build Versus Buy Math Just Flipped
A software renewal used to have two answers: renew, or shop for a cheaper seat. A third, building the workflow yourself, is now cheap enough to price, and pricing both the build and the run changes what the first two are worth.
Your Material Weakness Disclosure Is A Software Deadline
A disclosed control weakness is read in the boardroom as a governance sentence. It is also a dated commitment to produce evidence in a volume an auditor can sample, and records at that volume are produced by systems.