Planning uncertainties made explicit

An adviser’s work is mostly before and after the technology. They observe the task, document it with a map, help decide which tasks are worth changing, supervise a small pilot against written criteria and leave handover notes so the business can run, pause or change the result. Building is often the smaller part of an engagement. A written scope should say what is delivered, who owns the process afterwards and how success will be judged. See process mapping and pilot delivery.

Pick a task that repeats often, follows rules that can be written down, has structured input and costs little if an error slips through. Order routing and invoice matching are typical illustrations. A task that depends on personal judgement or handles sensitive data is a poor first choice. A short comparison against those characteristics appears under task selection. A modest first result also teaches the business how to write criteria, which makes later projects easier.

No. They are notations that help people agree on what a process is; a numbered list or a whiteboard works for a simple task. SIPOC is a five-column table of suppliers, inputs, process, outputs and customers, useful for a first conversation. BPMN, published as ISO/IEC 19510, adds symbols for decisions, waits and swimlanes, and suits tasks with several participants. A good adviser explains whichever is used and leaves the diagram in a form your team can edit. See process mapping.

Acceptance criteria are written, checkable statements of what a correct result looks like, agreed before the work begins. “Every order line in the source appears once in the output” can be tested; “faster” cannot. They turn a pilot from an impression into a comparison and give both sides a way to say it is finished or not. Good criteria cover accuracy, exceptions, what happens when something fails and how to switch the step off. Examples appear under task selection.

There is no standard length, and a number would mislead. A pilot should run long enough to meet normal days, busy periods and the awkward cases listed during mapping. For a task that peaks monthly, that means covering at least one peak. Fix a review date and stop conditions in advance, and keep the manual process running alongside so nothing depends on the trial. The structure of a pilot is described under pilot delivery.

CSV is a plain text file with one record per line (RFC 4180), the usual way to move data between spreadsheets, accounting packages and shops. JSON (RFC 8259) is a structured text format used by the interfaces of most web services. OAuth 2.0 (RFC 6749) lets one application act inside another without holding your password, and access can be revoked later. In practice you need to know which of these your tools support and who controls the permissions. See task selection.

It applies whenever a task handles information about identifiable people, such as customer names, delivery addresses or staff records. Practical consequences include collecting only the data the task needs, knowing the lawful basis, limiting who and what can see it, and knowing which suppliers process it for you. Some projects need a data protection impact assessment. This is general information, not legal advice; the data protection authority in your country publishes guidance, and a qualified adviser can apply it. See human oversight.

Automation changes tasks more often than it removes roles: it takes over repetitive copying and checking, while exceptions, judgement and customer contact stay with people. Whether roles change is a management decision, not a technical one, and it deserves discussion with the people affected before a pilot, not after. Employment law varies by country, so for questions about contracts or consultation duties, speak to a qualified employment adviser or the relevant public body. Responsibility for outcomes stays with named people, as covered under human oversight.

A failed pilot is a result, not a loss, provided it was bounded. Compare the differences with the acceptance criteria, record their causes, and decide whether to change the map, change the rules, narrow the task or stop. Because the manual process kept running, nothing needs rescuing. Write the decision and the reasons in the handover notes so the next attempt starts from what was learned. The PDCA cycle in pilot delivery describes the steps.