Stakeholder brief
Median refund time fell from 8 to 5 days, but the 90th percentile rose from 12 to 17. Volume grew 25%, incorrect refunds rose to 0.8%, and 40% of agents bypass the new intake. The sponsor asks you to declare success.
Decision brief
Prepare a benefits review with segmentation, leading and lagging indicators, causal hypotheses, corrective experiments, guardrails, owners and review dates.
Deliverable template
Problem / evidence / assumptions: Options and tradeoffs: Recommendation and rationale: Decision owner / governance: Dependencies / risks / mitigations: Success measure / review date:
Worked example & tradeoffs
The median improved but target and refund guardrail failed. Segment high-value, missing-item and bypass cases; inspect backlog age and workflow adoption. Growth and seasonal case mix may confound before/after comparison. Pilot training plus intake fixes, set a stop threshold for incorrect refunds, and assign finance to review control failures. Distinguish a product defect, process gap and unrealistic benefit assumption before proposing new automation.
One defensible approach. Your decision can differ if your evidence and tradeoffs support it.
Write the artifacts in your own words. Use identifiers to connect the objective, requirements and tests.