Series
Make the AI investment work
Work through review costs, budget limits, vendor questions, access decisions, and the responsibilities that come with putting agents to work across teams.
21 articles
Reading list
In this series
- 01
· Cost · 4 min
Does the agent save time once someone checks its work?
Calculate the human time an agent actually saves after instruction, review, correction, failed attempts, and maintenance, then decide what to improve next.
- 02
· Cost · 4 min
How to budget for agent work before demand is predictable
Build an agent spending range from task volume and unit cost, with separate funding for adoption, experiments, and recovery and clear conditions for expansion.
- 03
· Cost · 4 min
Estimate an agent job before you approve a larger batch
Estimate a larger agent batch using representative task groups, correctly priced usage, review labor, failed attempts, and an allowance for difficult cases.
- 04
· Cost · 4 min
Seats, credits, tasks, and tokens: compare agent offers on the same job
Compare seats, credits, tasks, and token pricing using the same workload, including retries, overages, review effort, and costs outside the plan.
- 05
· Audit & compliance · 4 min
What should an agent keep, and for how long?
Decide which agent inputs, outputs, action history, and reusable methods to keep, then test retention and deletion across the systems that hold copies.
- 06
· Operations · 4 min
Test your agent exit plan before renewal day
Rehearse an agent vendor exit by exporting completed work, reconstructing decisions, transferring a tested method, and measuring the effort needed to continue.
- 07
· Identity & access · 4 min
Who should own the credentials an agent uses?
Choose who owns and manages agent credentials, distinguish personal delegation from service access, and test what happens when an employee changes roles.
- 08
· Approvals & policy · 4 min
Who approves the action when three teams care about it?
Assign approval to the person with authority over each proposed action, with clear evidence, expiration, material-change rules, and backup coverage.
- 09
· Audit & compliance · 4 min
What should an agent audit actually cover?
Define what an agent audit must prove, from the original request and approval to the destination result, including uncertain writes and paths outside the review.
- 10
· Audit & compliance · 4 min
Replace the AI security questionnaire with a few concrete demonstrations
Turn procurement assurances into concrete demonstrations of access, approvals, exports, deletion, and spending controls for the workflow you intend to buy.
- 11
· Cost · 4 min
What actually stops an agent from spending all night?
Choose agent spending, retry, duration, and concurrency limits, reserve room for recovery, and test whether alternate credentials can bypass the intended stop.
- 12
· Operations · 4 min
When several teams use one agent, who owns a bad result?
Separate ownership of an individual task, a shared method, and the agent service so teams can repair bad results without losing useful local exceptions.
- 13
· Operations · 4 min
Write the pilot acceptance decision before the demo impresses everyone
Write the pilot decision before testing: define accepted work, unacceptable outcomes, reviewer disagreements, total cost, and the next authorized step.
- 14
· Operations · 3 min
The pilot worked. Can the review team handle ten times the work?
Estimate reviewer and specialist capacity before increasing agent volume, then rehearse a peak week with absent approvers, difficult cases, and stale requests.
- 15
· Operations · 4 min
What should leaders be told when an agent task goes wrong?
Give leaders a concise account of affected work, confirmed changes, uncertainty, fallback options, and the business decision needed when an agent task fails.
- 16
· Operations · 4 min
What is the business value of keeping the agent your team already uses?
Compare keeping, replacing, or supporting multiple agents by testing which company knowledge, methods, controls, and completed work survive a switch.
- 17
· Operations · 4 min
When can you review a sample of agent output instead of every item?
Decide which agent outputs are eligible for sampled quality review, how to select the sample, and when a defect should restore individual inspection.
- 18
· Cost · 4 min
Do agent time savings turn into lower cost or more capacity?
Distinguish lower spending from released capacity, faster service, and better quality, and assign responsibility for turning saved agent-work minutes into results.
- 19
· Cost · 4 min
Should you sign an annual agent contract while the workflow is still changing?
Evaluate an annual agent agreement against dependable demand, pricing definitions, quiet-month costs, changing workflows, and a tested way to exit.
- 20
· Identity & access · 4 min
When an agent asks for more access, what should the buyer ask first?
Evaluate an agent request for more access by identifying the exact operation, testing a narrower permission, and planning how temporary authority ends.
- 21
· Operations · 4 min
What evidence should decide whether an agent workflow gets another quarter?
Review an agent workflow before renewal using accepted results, total operating cost, reused methods, maintenance effort, and the option to narrow or retire it.