Leading the AI Transformation: Adoption, Value and Evidence

All courses / AI Leader / Module 4 / Chapter 20

Learning objectives

After the lesson the participant can:

• Describe a use case with its sponsor, hypothesis and stop rule, and distinguish the sponsor from the buyer of the tool.
• Explain what the productivity J-curve implies for reading early figures in both directions.
• Review a vendor claim with the five questions of scope, method, date, result and denominator, and interest.
• Draft an adoption and value record that shows quoted and measured figures, counting rule, status and expiry.

Key concepts

Portfolio of use cases

A use case is a bounded piece of work an AI system supports or performs, in one usage mode. Each has a sponsor who owns the outcome it should change, a hypothesis stating what should change and what would show it did not, and a stop rule set in advance.

Productivity J-curve

General purpose technologies require complementary investments that are often intangible and poorly measured, so productivity is underestimated in the early years and overestimated later. The leader is left with two ledgers, investment and return.

Activity is not value

At every usage mode the usual count, features switched on, sessions, logins, tasks run, transactions or actions executed, measures activity. A value claim needs a second measure taken from the work itself.

Evidence age and expiry

An adoption claim expires by a clock, 90 days for usage and 180 days for value as the book's own convention, and by conditions such as a change of provider model or counting rule. It is shown as verified, expired or asserted.

Evidence owner

The named person who can say what was measured and who is independent of the sponsor, for example the controller, internal audit or the AI governance lead. At Nordvik the evidence owner is the controller, not the CIO who owns the assistant.

Interactive exercises

Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.

Teaching plan

Discussion

1. A tool used by 38 per cent of people instead of 74 is hard to withdraw because the 38 per cent like it. What stop condition would you have written before the roll-out, and who would have had to sign it?
2. The record's value block says 'not measured', which the chapter calls a legitimate entry and better than a number nobody checked. How would your board react to that entry, and what does the reaction tell you?
3. The counting rule at both organisations was agreed with employee representatives before it was used. What does that agreement add to the credibility of the figure?

Written exercise

Self-test

Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.

1. Who is the sponsor of a use case in the chapter's sense?

   1. The person who bought the tool and holds the licence budget on behalf of the organisation
   2. The chief information officer in every case
   3. A named leader who owns the outcome the use case is meant to change
   4. The vendor's account manager for the product
   Show the answer

   C. A named leader who owns the outcome the use case is meant to change
   The sponsor is, for example, the head of a department whose backlog should fall. The sponsor is not the buyer of the tool and is not the CIO unless the use case is IT's own.

2. What did Hansa Mutual's executive board decide in AIDR-1070 after the sample of 1,200 licence holders found 38 per cent weekly use?

   1. To restate the target in feature events and show every figure with method and date, without setting a new percentage
   2. To lower the target from 70 to 40 per cent weekly use by the end of the year
   3. To withdraw the embedded assistants from units with low use
   4. To count any session longer than one minute as weekly use
   Show the answer

   A. To restate the target in feature events and show every figure with method and date, without setting a new percentage
   The board kept the 90-day expiry and did not decide a new percentage, because the record's value block is empty: nothing yet says that 38 per cent, or 70, is the right level.

3. Under the book's convention, what was the status of Nordvik Region's usage claim of 61 per cent in September 2029?

   1. Verified, because it came from the assistant's own dashboard
   2. Asserted, because it had never been checked against the logs
   3. Withdrawn, because the regional executive committee had voted to stop the assistant in October
   4. Expired, because it was last checked in February and usage claims expire after 90 days
   Show the answer

   D. Expired, because it was last checked in February and usage claims expire after 90 days
   The figure was last checked against the logs in February 2029. With a 90-day expiry for usage claims it expired in May, and its evidence age in September was seven months.