Workflow Evidence Sprint
21 working days to a Pilot Blueprint
Know whether the workflow is worth fixing by working day 10, and have the pilot designed by working day 21.
Know whether a workflow is worth fixing before you fund the fix.
What you will know at the end
Where is capacity actually being consumed?
What does a unit of this work cost today?
What happens to that as volume rises?
Which response has the strongest economics?
What should be funded in the next 90 days?
One engagement, two stages, one decision between them
- Stage 1 · Working days 1–10Establish, then Diagnose & Select
Build the evidence and the baseline, find where capacity is actually going, and select the intervention worth testing.
Ends in a GO / STOP decision on the evidence.
- Stage 2 · Working days 11–21Design, then Specify & Challenge
Design the future state to the depth the selected intervention requires, then specify the pilot and challenge its assumptions.
Ends in the Pilot Blueprint and a GO / CHANGE / STOP pilot decision.
Stage 1 runs working days 1–10 and ends in a decision. If the evidence doesn't justify continuing, the engagement ends there: you keep the evidence and pay only for Stage 1. If it does, Stage 2 takes the selected intervention to a Pilot Blueprint by working day 21.
Your commitment is £7,500 until day 10. You decide then whether the evidence justifies continuing — if it doesn't, the second stage is never invoiced.
What the engagement delivered
A Leania engagement, shown anonymised; the client is not identified.
Not another opportunity report
The operating, data and solution design needed to make a defensible pilot investment decision.
Example deliverable structure — shown to demonstrate the form of the day-21 output. No client values are shown.
See a completed illustrative example →
- 01
Evidence & Capacity Case
Representative contents- Baseline
- Capacity exposure
- Evidence strength
Decision enabledIs the problem material enough to justify intervention?
- 02
Redesigned Workflow
Representative contents- Current vs designed
- Hand-offs
- Retained professional review
Decision enabledWhat should the operation look like?
- 03
Data & Fitness Map
Representative contents- Purpose
- Usable / usable with control / blocker
Decision enabledIs the information fit enough to proceed, and what must be remediated?
- 04
Solution Concept & Technical Boundaries
Representative contents- Required components
- Automation or AI role where justified
- Unresolved technical decisions
Decision enabledHow could this fit the environment, and what needs specialist validation before build?
- 05
Human, Adoption & Control Design
Representative contents- Human judgement
- Approval and sign-off
- Control ownership
Decision enabledWhat stays human, how will people trust and use it, and where are the controls?
- 06
Pilot Specification
Representative contents- Thin-slice scope
- Baseline
- Pass / change / stop thresholds
Decision enabledAre we ready to approve and mobilise the pilot?
Design depth follows the intervention
The solution panel is populated only to the depth the selected intervention requires, which may be light.
Start with the problem. Earn the technology.
Six ways to remove capacity loss. Each is assessed on the evidence; none is the default.
- StopUse when
The activity adds no value to the client, the firm or a control.
- SimplifyUse when
Steps, approvals or hand-offs exist that the outcome doesn’t need.
- StandardiseUse when
Teams or offices do the same work in materially different ways.
- WorkflowUse when
Work is lost in queues, inboxes and hand-offs between people.
- AutomateUse when
Rules are stable and volume is repeatable.
- AIUse when
Unstructured information or variable interpretation is materially constraining the process.
Don’t whenDeterministic rules solve the problem reliably.
The preferred intervention is the simplest one that reliably achieves the outcome and clears the economic and control threshold.
Every input stated separately, so finance can challenge any one of them
- Observed demand (cases per year)
- Recoverable effort (minutes per case)
- Coverage (%)
- Adoption (%)
- 60 (minutes per hour)
- Recoverable capacity (hours per year)
Every term carries its unit. This calculation yields hours per year, not money: the value model applies the rate that converts those hours into a value pool.
- Measured
- Client-supplied
- Derived
- Assumption
Adoption is shown as a variable, not an assumption made on your behalf: capacity is only released if the redesigned way of working is actually adopted.
- Cashable
Cost that leaves the business.
- Capacity release
Hours returned to fee-earning or absorbed volume, not cash.
- Cost avoidance
Cost that would otherwise have been incurred.
- Conservative
- Expected
- Upper
The three branches are never blended into one number, and the sensitivity range travels with the figure.
How 21 working days is spent
Establish, then Diagnose & Select — Decision gate — working day 10 — Design, then Specify & Challenge.
Typical sequence. The stage boundary at working day 10 and the 21-working-day total are fixed.
Your team validates. Leania does the work.
Leania does the analysis and design; your team validates it. We typically need a sponsor, short working sessions with the people who do the work, and a decision readout at each stage. Your team's commitment is agreed in the proposal before work starts, and any change is agreed before it uses more of their time.
- A sponsor who can state the business trigger and take the decision at each stage
- Short working sessions with the people who actually run the workflow
- The operational evidence and procedure material that already exists
- A named finance contact to agree the basis of the numbers
- A decision at day 10, and a decision at day 21
- Evidence, baseline and root cause
- Capacity and economic modelling, challenged throughout
- Intervention assessment and selection
- Future-state, data and adoption design
- Pilot specification and the decision pack
Senior-led, specialist-delivered: Leania specifies the work, sets acceptance criteria and signs off quality, independent of any build supplier.
The sprint runs on Leania’s internal tooling for process mapping and baseline arithmetic. What that tooling does, and what it never decides, is described on the delivery-infrastructure page.
One engagement, priced by stage
What you commit to.
Stage 1 runs working days 1–10 and ends in a decision. If the evidence doesn't justify continuing, the engagement ends there: you keep the evidence and pay only for Stage 1. If it does, Stage 2 takes the selected intervention to a Pilot Blueprint by working day 21.
Larger scopes are quoted.
- Evidence baseline
- Capacity and economic case
- Root-cause and constraint analysis
- Intervention decision
- Redesigned workflow
- Data and fitness map
- Solution concept and technical boundaries
- Key requirements and controls
- Pilot specification
- Success measures and thresholds
- Mobilisation work packages
- Executive decision pack
One bounded, named workflow, an identifiable process owner, a live business trigger and a credible evidence path.
This sprint fits when
- A repeated, high-volume workflow
- A named owner
- A live cost, capacity, service or regulatory trigger
- Access to people and an evidence-rich or evidence-poor route to a defensible baseline
- Willingness to stop if the economics do not justify change
It does not fit when
- A broad "find us AI" request
- A predetermined tool purchase
- No owner or evidence access
- One-off or low-volume work
- A free diagnosis request
Not part of the 21 working days
- Production code or configured automation
- Working integrations
- Detailed requirements, user stories or interface specifications
- A full data model
- Test scripts or executed user-acceptance testing
- A completed DPIA, security approval or architecture assurance
- Vendor selection
- Training materials or a change programme
- Implementation and delivery assurance
- Benefits tracking after go-live
Each of these may appear in the Blueprint as an identified next-stage requirement. None of them is delivered inside the engagement.
And the boundaries of the work itself
- No actuarial, underwriting, tax-technical, legal or audit advice.
- No audit opinion; no certification of accounts.
- Where technical build is required, it is delivered by the client's existing technology team or vetted specialist delivery partners against Leania's requirements, acceptance criteria and quality controls.
- No guarantee of a unit-cost outcome that depends on client adoption, volume mix, staffing decisions, data quality or third-party delivery outside our control.
- No build, configuration or supplier selection happens inside the sprint; it establishes the evidence for those decisions.
- Where neither evidence route supports a defensible measure, the scope is narrowed, confidence is downgraded or the sprint stops. The gap is never estimated around.
The questions that decide it
What happens at day 10?
Stage 1 runs working days 1–10 and ends in a decision. If the evidence doesn't justify continuing, the engagement ends there: you keep the evidence and pay only for Stage 1. If it does, Stage 2 takes the selected intervention to a Pilot Blueprint by working day 21.
Our data is imperfect. Does that stop this?
No. The question is fitness for purpose, not perfection. The data and fitness map records what exists, how complete and current it is, and marks each source usable, usable with control, or a blocker — so a gap is stated rather than estimated around.
Will you just recommend AI?
The intervention map is the answer: six options, equal weight, each assessed on the evidence and none the default. The two technology options disqualify themselves where the work has not first been simplified and standardised.
Will you tell us what we already know?
Possibly, about the symptom. The Blueprint is not a list of problems: it carries the measured magnitude, the validated cause, the selected intervention, the economics behind it and the pilot that would prove it.
Can our own team or vendor build the pilot?
Yes. The Blueprint is written to be built against by whoever is best placed to build it. Leania can provide independent delivery assurance while they build — that is a separate engagement, and it is the only part of this we would ask you to decide later.
How much of our people’s time does this take?
Leania does the analysis and design; your team validates it. The commitment is agreed in the proposal before work starts, and any change is agreed before it uses more of their time.
What if the economics do not justify changing anything?
Then the engagement says so and stops at day 10. That is the point of the gate, and it is why Stage 2 is invoiced only on a GO decision.
Is the Blueprint enough to start building from?
It is enough to decide to pilot, to scope the pilot and to mobilise it. Detailed requirements, a full data model, test scripts and delivery assurance are the next stage, and the boundary is published above rather than left to interpretation.
Why should we trust Leania with this?
One anonymised engagement for a major national accountancy group, with the delivered result stated and the parts still awaiting publication permission withheld rather than described loosely.
What if we only want the evidence?
That is Stage 1, and it is a complete piece of work on its own. You keep the evidence whether or not you continue.
Is there enough capacity at stake to justify a pilot?
- Bring
One high-volume workflow, and the reason it is on your list now.
- We will test
Whether it is bounded enough, and whether the evidence exists to measure it.
- You leave with
A straight answer on whether this is worth an engagement, and what Stage 1 would establish.
Not ready for that conversation?
Run the free Pressure Test first →
Your own numbers, no email required, and it will tell you if the answer is no.