A bounded population
Write the inclusion rule in one sentence and pull the list from a trusted system.
For your team / Strategy and innovation
Make the first workflow credible enough to expand.
A first workflow becomes useful when its population, measure, owner and expansion criteria are settled before launch.
Expansion is one possible answer.
A first workflow enters an evidence review. The governed decision can be to stop, revise, keep the work local, standardize it, or expand it.
- 01Candidate workflow
- 02Evidence dossier
- 03Stop
- 04Revise and retest
- 05Keep local
- 06Standardize or expand
The dossier represents decision gates, not promised dates. No outcome is automatic, and expansion is not visually or operationally privileged.
A first workflow enters an evidence review covering its bounded population, named failure, pre-existing measure, and owner who can approve change. The review produces one governed decision: stop, revise and retest, keep the workflow local, or standardize and expand.
Selection
What makes a first workflow credible
If a candidate fails two of these tests, it is a poor first choice.
A failure people already name
Staff can describe the break without prompting, and a result would matter in a budget conversation.
A measure that already exists
Its definition and denominator predate Rely. Inventing the measure with the intervention makes the result unfalsifiable.
An owner who can approve change
Someone can change the workflow, not merely observe it. Learning that cannot be released is only a report.
Standard or local
Not everything that works in one department should become policy
The first workflow should reveal what is genuinely common across the system and what belongs to one department's local reality.
- Common: eligibility logic, disclosure, licensed escalation, closure definitions and reconciliation.
- Local: exception owners, coverage hours, resource lists and external partner behavior.
- Evidence decides attempt patterns, routing and when a path needs a person.
Expansion gates
Use evidence gates for expansion.
These are evidence gates, not a promised timeline.
- Gate 1
Scope, clearance and tests
Scope, permitted actions, the clinical boundary, security, legal and tests are signed before launch.
- Gate 2
The path gets mapped before it gets automated
Navigators map the routes the real population takes. Expect discovery, not steady-state performance.
- Gate 3
Stable routine work and a known exception set
Service levels have history, exceptions are understood, and reporting reconciles against the source system.
- Gate 4
The standard-versus-local decision
Operating evidence decides what becomes standard, stays local or deserves an adjacent transition.
- Gate 5
Expansion, against pre-agreed evidence
Expansion is a decision against criteria written before launch, never an automatic next phase.
The ask
Compare three candidate workflows in one working session.
You leave with one recommended first workflow, its measurement design and initial expansion criteria. If none meet the four tests, we will say that in meeting one.
- Bring two or three candidates and the measures you already report.
- Name the operational owner, clinical validator, security reviewer and budget owner.
- Definitions, denominators and attribution boundaries are agreed before launch. A measure chosen after the result is not evidence.
Bring us three candidate workflows.
We will tell you which one is a credible first proof, and which one would produce a result nobody can act on.