Business-case review
Use approved case materials to identify missing assumptions, evidence gaps, and questions before a leadership review. The business-case owner decides what to change.
Focused agent method
Design a Focused AI Agent
A practical method and local worksheet for turning one recurring business task into a reviewable, accountable AI-assisted design.
- Audience
- PMO, operations, governance, and technology leaders
- Outcome
- A copy-ready starter prompt with clear sources, review, and limits
Start with one useful job
A useful agent has a defined job, approved inputs, an expected output, a human reviewer, known limitations, and a resulting action or decision. This method is PMO-first, but it also works for routine governance, operations, procurement, finance, and technology work.
Design for preparation and review, not unbounded autonomy. A person remains responsible for validating evidence, resolving uncertainty, and deciding what happens next.
The focused-agent method
- Define the job. Name the recurring task, who needs the result, when it happens, and the decision or action it supports.
- Define the source trail. List approved sources and their owner, state prohibited sources, and require an explicit response when evidence is missing or conflicts.
- Define the output. Set the format, evidence or citation expectations, assumptions, next action, and escalation rule.
- Define the human operating model. Name the reviewer, approval or action owner, exception owner, maintenance owner, and success measure.
- Test with real work. Use messy, incomplete, and conflicting inputs. Require “not found” rather than a guess, then compare the reviewed result with the current process.
Focused Agent Design Worksheet
All fields are optional. Complete what you know; any blank field stays visible in the copied prompt as a placeholder rather than becoming an invented detail.
Validate sources, instructions, and outputs before operational use. This worksheet does not approve a use case, source, action, or decision.
PMO-oriented examples
Executive project briefing
Prepare a concise briefing from approved records, prior decisions, milestones, and open issues. The executive sponsor or project owner validates the material and determines the response.
What to test before you rely on it
Try real examples that are incomplete, inconsistent, and messy. Check whether the output points to evidence, declares uncertainty, and reaches the reviewer in a useful format. Update the source boundary, instructions, or escalation rule when a person finds a failure.