Practitioner guide
Applying the Practical Delegation Test
A short companion guide for practitioners deciding whether to use AI on a real task, how far to delegate, and what still needs human judgement.
A companion guide to Delegating Work to AI
Summary
This guide turns the Practical Delegation Test from the full whitepaper into a short, at-the-point-of-work tool for practitioners.
Use it when you are deciding whether to ask AI to do a real task rather than simply help you think. It is designed for ordinary work where a plausible but wrong answer could create review debt, hidden uncertainty, weak handoffs, or misplaced accountability.
The guide asks the same four questions as the full paper:
- Can I describe the outcome clearly?
- Can I verify the result cheaply enough?
- What judgement must remain human?
- Where does the uncertainty go?
Those questions help you decide whether AI can execute directly, whether the work needs checkpoints, whether the task should remain human-led with AI support, or whether it should not be delegated.
How this relates to the whitepaper
The full whitepaper, Delegating Work to AI, explains the wider argument, leadership framing, governance implications, and supporting concepts behind the Practical Delegation Test.
This companion guide is for use closer to the work. It strips the framework down to the questions, prompts, delegation levels, and caution points a practitioner needs when deciding how to use AI on a real task.
Read the whitepaper if you want the full rationale. Use this guide when you want the practical version beside you.
Download
The guide is available as a PDF: