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The AI Program Diagnostic is step 1 of every engagement. I map the workflows your AI work touches and hand you a 90-day plan with an owner, a baseline, and a build type on every line. It buys the plan. It does not build anything.
Three diagnostics run at a time. See what you get.
None of this is a model problem. Two teams are waiting on the same integration. A vendor renewal is coming and nobody has read the contract. The thing that shipped in March has no owner. Every piece has a champion and the program has nobody.
The time is not where teams look for it. A piece of work that takes 20 minutes of real effort can take six days to get through the business, because it sits in queues between handoffs. Drop AI onto one step and that step gets faster. The six days barely move.
So the diagnostic maps the waits between the steps. It is built from your system data and from interviews with the people who do the work, because you need both. The data shows where time goes. The people tell you why.
A working session. I pull the inventory out of your head: what is running, who touched it last, which vendors are in play, and what leadership is asking for. You leave with the access list I need.
I trace each workflow through your systems and talk to the people who run it. Owners, handoffs, hands-on time against elapsed time, and what breaks downstream. Then I rank the sequence against it.
We walk the plan with you and whoever else has to sign off. I answer the questions and rehearse the pushback, so the plan survives the room it has to pass through.
$2,500 buys the plan. It does not build anything. Day 1 is a 60-minute kickoff. Days 2 through 9 I map your AI work. Day 10 you get the readout. Paid before kickoff, so there is no scoping back and forth and no change orders.
$2,500 flat. Credited in full.
What the $2,500 pays for: eight working days of my time, interviews with the people who run each workflow, and the numbers pulled from your own systems. On the retainer, eight days bills at over $20,000. What it protects: a two-workflow build is $15,000, and the plan makes sure that money goes to the right two.
Not included
Building, integrating, or training. That is step 2, the Scoped AI Build, priced per workflow from $7,500 with a two-workflow minimum. The price is fixed in writing at the readout. You see the plan before you decide whether to build any of it, and the plan is yours to take anywhere.
Four lines from a 90-day sequence for an 80-person services firm. Illustrative, not a client. A real plan runs 10 to 20 lines, and every line carries the same columns. Those columns are what the guarantee checks.
| # | Workflow | Owner | Baseline today | Build type | Handoffs removed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Weekly pipeline report Quick win | Sales ops lead | 3 hrs a week, pulled by hand from the CRM | Plain code | 1 |
| 02 | Invoice to purchase order match | AP manager | 20 min of work, 6 days elapsed, 4 handoffs | Agent, human approves | 3 |
| 03 | New client intake to kickoff | Director of operations | 11 days elapsed, 5 handoffs across 3 teams | Code plus agent | 3 |
| × | Website chatbot pilot Kill | Marketing lead | 40 chats a month, none tracked to a sale | Stop it | 0 |
Build types: plain code when a rule does the job, an agent when it takes judgment, human review when a mistake costs more than the time saved. Plans usually turn out to be mostly code.
This is for you if
You can say yes without a committee. At least one AI use case already shipped or already stalled. Nobody is accountable for how the pieces fit. That usually means a company of 20 to 200 people.
Not yet
Nothing is running and nothing has been tried, so there is no workflow to map yet. Take the free AI Program Scorecard and come back when something is live.
Past this stage
The program is moving and has an owner. You need capacity or a second opinion on one bet, not a map. Start a Fractional conversation instead.
I was a Technical Program Manager at eBay, operating at director-plus scope and reporting to a VP of Engineering. My peers were directors and engineering managers. My job was getting roughly a dozen teams across Core Product and Core Technology to agree on trade-offs.
That meant mapping what depended on what, surfacing risk before it landed, and getting people who disagreed to settle on an answer. It is the same map an AI program needs. Today I also ship production AI as the founder of baxie, an AI-native construction SaaS in beta, so the plan comes from someone who has to build against plans like it.
Two weeks that end in a plan. Day 1 is a 60-minute kickoff. Days 2 to 9 I map the workflows your AI work touches, from your system data and interviews with the people who do the work. Day 10 is a 60-minute readout. You get the workflow map, the 90-day sequence, the kill list, and the readout.
$2,500 flat, paid before kickoff. No scoping back and forth and no change orders. Move to the build or either retainer within 30 days of the readout and the whole $2,500 comes off it.
The readout happens on day 10, and every line of the plan has a named owner, a measured baseline, and a build type. If the readout slips or any line is missing any of the three, you get the full $2,500 back. It assumes you attend the day 1 kickoff and give me the access on the kickoff list.
No. The diagnostic buys the plan. Building is step 2, the Scoped AI Build, priced per workflow from $7,500 with a two-workflow minimum and fixed in writing at the readout. The plan does name one quick win your team can ship on its own before any build starts.
You own the AI decision and can say yes without a committee. You have tried at least one AI use case, so something shipped or stalled. And nobody is accountable for how the pieces fit together. That usually means a company of 20 to 200 people.
The scorecard is twelve questions you answer about yourself, and it tells you roughly where you stand. The diagnostic is me going and looking at your systems and talking to your people. The scorecard scores the situation. The diagnostic maps it and names who moves first.
The next opening is October 6. I run three diagnostics at a time, and when those slots are full, booking closes until one opens.
$2,500 flat. Readout on day 10 with every line complete, or you get it back.
Take the October 6 slotNot ready to talk? Score your AI program first. Twelve questions, about four minutes, scored breakdown by email.