Workflow Assessment: Deciding What's Worth Automating
Before any build starts, candidate workflows are surfaced through stakeholder workshops and ranked by impact against effort. The highest-ranked candidates get an ROI model with conservative, central, and stretch scenarios - a figure an executive team can defend at review, with assumptions cited and a sensitivity analysis included, rather than a single optimistic number.
Dependencies To Surface Before Committing
- System dependencies: every system the transformation touches, mapped with the data it reads or writes and the security posture required for that integration.
- Compliance and data residency: relevant framework positioning (such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR/DPDP where applicable) and on-prem options, documented per workload rather than assumed.
- Team composition: the people and skills each workstream needs, confirmed before the rollout plan is finalized, not discovered mid-rollout.
Rollout Plan: Milestones, Owners, and Dependencies
The rollout plan sets milestones, dependencies, and team composition per workstream, with a named accountable owner for each one. A plan without a named owner tends to stall at the first obstacle; a plan with unclear dependencies tends to slip once the real sequencing problems surface.
Evaluating Each Phase Before the Next Starts
Hypothetical example, not a claimed customer result. A transformation engagement might move through Discover (workshops surface and scope the top candidate workflows), Size (ROI modeling with bounded scenarios), Architect (reference architecture, integration map, and compliance posture documented), and Plan (a milestone-based deployment plan with named owners) before a Ship phase delivers the signed plan and a ready backlog. Each phase's output should be reviewed and accepted before the next begins - the specific timeline for your engagement should be confirmed directly rather than assumed from this illustrative sequence.
Related: AI Infrastructure for the deployment and operating work that follows a signed rollout plan, and Explore AI Services to scope an engagement interactively.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a workflow assessment actually produce?
A ranked list of candidate workflows (by impact versus effort) and an ROI model with conservative, central, and stretch scenarios for the highest-ranked ones - not a finished implementation. The assessment decides what's worth building before anything is built.
How are dependencies and integration risk identified?
During the architecture step, every system the transformation touches is mapped along with the data it reads or writes and the security posture required for that integration. Dependencies that aren't surfaced at this stage tend to surface later, as delays.
What's in the rollout plan deliverable?
A deployment plan with milestones, dependencies, and team composition requirements per workstream, along with a named accountable owner. The exact timeline depends on scope agreed during the assessment, not a fixed template.
How is a phase evaluated before moving to the next one?
Each phase has a defined output - a signed-off heat map, an ROI model an executive team can defend, an integration map, a compliance posture per workload - that should be reviewed and accepted before the next phase starts, rather than phases running on an uninterrupted calendar regardless of readiness.
Does this cover compliance and data residency?
Compliance and data-residency positioning (relevant frameworks, on-prem options) is documented per workload as part of the architecture step. The specific requirements that apply depend on your industry and data - confirm these directly rather than assuming a default posture.