Practical workflow notes

Before adding AI, define the work

A weekly report can involve more work than the final document suggests. Someone gathers records, checks the reporting period, resolves conflicting totals and asks another person to review the draft. If you start by choosing an AI tool, those responsibilities can remain undefined.

Write down the task first. What starts it? Which inputs does it need? What must the output contain, and who decides that it is ready to use? Keep the first discussion narrow enough that a person can show you a normal example and an exception.

Bring an example of a useful result

A redacted report gives the discussion something concrete. Mark the reporting period, required fields, source references and unanswered questions. Explain which parts must be exact and where judgment is allowed. Do not include private information that the reviewer is not authorized to receive.

The example should also show the destination. Preparing a draft for an employee to review has different consequences from sending it to a customer or changing a record in another system. Decide who approves those actions before connecting them.

Examine the awkward case

A missing field or duplicate record can reveal a requirement that the normal example hides. Decide how the workflow should flag the problem, who resolves it and whether the rest of the task can continue. A missing source should remain visible rather than being filled with a plausible guess.

For a simple numeric report, required-field checks, duplicate detection and recomputed totals may be enough. If a later step requires interpreting free-form text, examine that step separately. The presence of an AI tool does not remove the need to define a correct result.

Measure the whole task

Include preparation, review and correction time in the baseline. Record the sample period and distinguish observed values from estimates. If you do not have a measurement, leave it unknown. A shorter drafting step is not necessarily a shorter end-to-end task, and released time is not automatically a reduction in business expenses.

Choose the next decision

The useful next step may be a clearer process, a feature in an existing tool, a limited custom build or a decision to defer. Compare the operating effort, failure cases and maintenance responsibilities before committing to implementation.

The Tempero Workflow Assessment examines one task, one accountable owner, one output and up to two systems. It produces a workflow map, the available baseline and evidence gaps, feasibility notes and a recommendation, with a bounded pilot brief if justified. Implementation has a separate scope. Practical intelligence for smarter work.