Interactive guide
Define the Decision Before You Automate It
“Can we use AI to qualify our inbound?” There is no decision in that sentence. It does not say what the possible answers are, who is accountable when one of them is wrong, what has to be true before an answer is allowed, what happens when the information is missing, or what the system may do once it has decided.
When a request seems clear enough to build, teams can leave important assumptions to implementation. This example makes those assumptions explicit before anyone configures the workflow. You will build a Decision Card: one decision somebody else could implement without asking you a single question. The lab saves your progress in your browser.
Turn an unclear request into a decision with Maya.
Three people hear different projects in the same request. Help Maya separate the question, evidence, owner, and permission to act, then capture them in a Decision Card.
Start with a broken answer
Turn a Vague Request Into a Decision
Chapter 1 of 8 · 16 min
The learning path
The early chapters take one short request in a channel and turn it into a question with a named owner, a fixed set of answers, and a list of what has to be known before any answer is allowed. The later ones deal with the requests that do not fit.
Turning a request into a decision
- 01Turn a Vague Request Into a DecisionState one decision, its trigger, and the moment it must return, then split out the decisions hiding inside it.~16 min · exercise
- 02Name the Owner and Business PurposeAssign accountability to someone who can change the rules, and state a purpose you can test.~14 min · exercise
- 03Define the Allowed OutcomesBuild a closed, mutually exclusive outcome set where every outcome earns a different consequence.~16 min · exercise
- 04Choose the Required EvidenceSay what must be observed, what it may be inferred from, and what the decision is not allowed to use.~16 min · exercise
Making it safe to build on
- 05Separate Hard Rules From InterpretationKeep checkable rules apart from judgment calls, order them, and let a qualitative rule veto a quantitative pass.~14 min · exercise
- 06Add Unknown and Review OutcomesMake "we do not know" a real answer, and stop a record being stranded when the decision never returns.~18 min · exercise
- 07Decide What May Happen NextMap each outcome to what the system may do about it, gated on risk rather than confidence.~16 min · exercise
- 08Capstone: Complete the Decision CardValidate the whole card against a set of records and approve version 1.0.~22 min · exercise