Back to the book

The working index

The Diagnostic Instruments

Ten pressure tests for enterprise AI governance — from Govern or Fail. The names and what each one is for are below; the full instruments arrive by email.

  1. The Language Questions

    Do the people funding, building, and approving the system mean the same thing by the words that define it?

  2. The Portfolio Lens

    How much governance discipline does each system actually have, and how much production value does it actually generate?

  3. The Operating Test

    What must the next AI team build from scratch? If the answer is everything, governance is not yet reusable.

  4. The Production Threshold

    The questions that separate an experiment from a production candidate.

  5. The Vendor Questions

    Three questions that force implementation details into view before you buy.

  6. The Executive Translation

    Five questions every technical briefing should answer.

  7. The Customer Challenge Test

    Assume one AI decision is disputed; can you defend it from the operating record?

  8. The Portfolio Metrics

    Six measures that connect governance, value, and velocity.

  9. The Three Pressure Tests

    Where the organisation sits, what compounds to 2030, what's being decided this quarter.

  10. The Four Prerequisites

    Discovery, ownership, boundaries, route.

These instruments diagnose. They don't prescribe. The operational specifics deserve more validation than a checklist can provide — that's the subject of the work that follows the book.