Find the small workflow worth improving.

Observe one real occurrence

Choose a task someone repeats: preparing a handover, reviewing an intake request or assembling a weekly brief. Walk through a recent example rather than asking only what the ideal process looks like.

Write down the trigger, inputs, decisions, systems touched and final output. Note where someone waits, copies information, asks for clarification or fixes a mistake. Those details are often more useful than the formal process diagram.

Separate rules from interpretation

Some steps need no AI. A required-field check or a date comparison can usually be a simple rule. AI may help interpret an unstructured request, draft a response or summarize evidence, provided someone can inspect the result.

Mark the consequential steps. Approving a purchase, sending a message and changing access need boundaries and appropriate review. A useful prototype can stop at a recommendation.

Fictional supplier intake:
Trigger: a request arrives.
Rules: check required fields and duplicate request ID.
AI-assisted step: extract the requested service and draft clarification questions.
Human review: resolve ambiguity and approve any reply.
Output: a checked request and a record of what remains missing.

Design the unhappy path first

What happens if information is missing, two sources disagree or a tool is unavailable? Decide when the workflow should stop, ask a person or retry. Assign an owner to the exceptions.

Use synthetic cases to try ordinary, incomplete and conflicting requests. Keep the expected behavior explicit. A successful happy-path demonstration is not evidence that the process is ready to run unattended.

Compare with the current way of working

Review quality, effort and total cost, including the time needed to check and correct the result. Faster drafting is not a useful improvement if it creates more review work downstream.

Choose the next step based on what you observed: improve the brief, change the workflow, test a little further or stop. Give any recurring workflow an owner and a way to turn it off.