Four AI capabilities. Four decisions to make.

The team and the review

Fictional example. Alder Works is an invented 80-person software company. Every tool, configuration, person, cost, date, and observation below is illustrative. This is a worked planning example, not a customer case study or product recommendation.

The operations lead, Morgan, is reviewing four capabilities before the next renewal cycle. The scope covers support, internal knowledge, general writing, and engineering. It excludes personal accounts and experimental tools that have not yet been inventoried; Morgan owns that follow-up by October 2.

Review date: September 20, 2026. All amounts are invented monthly USD costs. References such as “billing record” describe evidence the fictional team would keep in its own workspace; they are not external sources.

01 / Keep and review: support drafting

• Record: SUP-01, helpdesk draft assistant, active for eight support agents.
• Workflow: Draft a response using approved help articles. An agent checks and sends it.
• Accountable owner: Sam, support lead. Technical owner: Lee, helpdesk administrator.
• Access and actions: Reads the public help collection and the current ticket through the helpdesk integration. Can save a draft; cannot send a reply in the documented configuration. Lee owns checking the effective permission scope after configuration changes.
• Human review: The assigned agent checks accuracy, customer-specific details, and links. Uncertain cases go to Sam. Ticket access still needs to match the assigned agent’s permissions.
• Dependencies: Help article owners, helpdesk roles, ticket assignment, and the draft review queue.
• Evidence in the fictional record: Configuration captured September 18; Sam’s weekly review log. These establish the intended setup and recorded observations, not comprehensive testing of every access boundary.
• Cost: $240 license charge in the fictional billing record; usage included within the current allowance. Estimated review effort: two team-hours per week. Incremental cost above the allowance remains unknown.
• Overlap: WRT-01 can also draft text, but it does not have this ticket workflow. Similar output alone is not a reason to replace SUP-01.
• Decision: Keep the current limited workflow. Before expanding it, Lee will test a ticket the requesting agent cannot access; Sam will measure corrections alongside time saved.
• Action owner and date: Lee and Sam, October 2. Decision owner: Sam. Next review: October 9, or earlier if data sources or send permissions change.
• Exit: Lee can disable the integration. Agents return to manual drafting. Sam will confirm retention needs for existing drafts before deletion.

02 / Investigate: internal knowledge search

• Record: KNW-01, workspace search assistant, pilot with twelve operations staff.
• Workflow: Find answers in onboarding and process documents, with links to the source.
• Accountable owner: Morgan, operations lead. Technical owner: Lee.
• Access and actions: Intended to read two document collections only, with no write actions. Whether the connector preserves each user’s source permissions is still unknown.
• Human review: Staff open the cited source before acting on an answer. Morgan handles conflicting or outdated guidance.
• Dependencies: Document owners, group membership, indexing schedule, and connector credentials.
• Evidence gap: A connector inventory exists, but the record does not yet contain an effective-permissions check. Unknown stays visible; it is not marked as passed.
• Cost: Included in the existing workspace subscription. No standalone license cost assigned. Two hours of setup recorded in the fictional work log; ongoing administration has not been measured.
• Overlap: Staff sometimes paste documents into WRT-01. That is a separate data-sharing path to investigate, not an approved workaround.
• Decision: Pause expansion. Lee will verify access behavior using permitted and restricted synthetic documents before Morgan decides whether to resume. Keep sensitive collections disconnected while the question is unresolved.
• Action owner and date: Lee, September 25. Decision owner: Morgan. Next review: September 26, or immediately after any unexpected document exposure.
• Exit: Disconnect the source connector and use source-system search. Lee must verify how indexed copies are removed and record the result.

03 / Compare: general writing assistant

• Record: WRT-01, standalone writing workspace, twenty purchased seats; active use not yet confirmed.
• Workflow: Draft internal announcements and edit non-confidential text.
• Accountable owner: Casey, communications lead. Billing owner: Morgan.
• Access and actions: Users paste text manually. No connectors or external actions are approved in this example. Casey still needs to check whether every workspace setting matches that policy.
• Human review: The person sharing a draft reviews it first. Casey handles messaging questions.
• Dependencies: User training, workspace settings, and the subscription.
• Evidence gap: Purchased seats are known from the fictional invoice. Active users, pasted-data practices, retention settings, and actual review effort are not yet established.
• Cost: $400 monthly license charge. Usage included. Setup and review effort unknown. Renewal: October 15; fictional contract requires cancellation by October 5.
• Overlap: The existing workspace suite also offers writing assistance. Its access, output quality, and terms have not been compared.
• Decision: Compare the two options on the same ten non-confidential writing tasks. Include review time and user needs. Do not count the entire $400 as savings until remaining demand, contract terms, and replacement costs are checked.
• Action owner and date: Casey, October 1. Decision owner: Morgan, October 3. Review earlier if cancellation terms differ from the recorded assumption.
• Exit: Casey identifies shared prompts or documents that need export; Lee verifies account closure and retention steps. Users need an agreed replacement before access is removed.

04 / Plan retirement: unused coding trial

• Record: DEV-01, coding assistant trial, five engineers; trial ended September 17.
• Workflow: Suggest code changes in a sandbox repository.
• Accountable owner: Alex, engineering lead. Technical owner: Lee.
• Access and actions: Trial service account reads the sandbox repository. Suggestions require engineer review; the trial has no production deployment permission in the recorded setup.
• Human review: Engineers review suggested changes and run the repository’s checks. Alex owns unresolved trial issues.
• Dependencies: Editor extensions, service account, repository access, and trial workspace.
• Evidence in the fictional record: Trial roster and repository access list checked September 19. Alex confirms no team workflow depends on the trial. That confirmation should be retained with the retirement record.
• Cost: No paid license during the trial; six engineer-hours recorded for setup and evaluation. A proposed paid tier is excluded from current spend. Auto-conversion and cancellation terms still need verification before the deadline.
• Overlap: Existing engineering tools cover the team’s current needs; this example does not establish that they are equivalent products.
• Decision: Retire after Alex confirms any work to retain and Lee checks conversion terms. Remove credentials and extensions that are no longer needed, then verify access is revoked.
• Action owner and date: Lee, September 23. Decision owner: Alex. Review: September 24 to confirm completion, not merely that cancellation was requested.
• Exit evidence: Cancellation acknowledgment, revoked service-account access, retained trial notes, and owner confirmation that engineers can continue their work.

What the review changed

The team kept support drafting within its current boundary, assigned a permissions investigation for knowledge search, scheduled a writing-tool comparison before the cancellation deadline, and gave the coding trial a retirement owner.

The fictional license charges total $640 per month for SUP-01 and WRT-01. That is only the two listed charges. It excludes the existing workspace subscription, unmeasured usage, and labor. The example establishes no realized savings, return on investment, or readiness score.

A week later, Morgan should ask for the missing evidence and completed actions. Updating a status to “retired” before access revocation is confirmed would hide work that still needs doing.