Every question, in one place
Everything we get asked, answered in full.
1424 questions from across the site, grouped into 51 subjects. Every question below links to its answer, and each answer is the one that sits on the page it came from, word for word.
- questions, each answered in full rather than summarised
- 1424
- groups, each a page of its own
- 51
- pages they are answered on, every one linked
- 72
Tenhaw is a London-based UK AI consultancy and AI delivery partner that audits, builds and governs agentic transformation for large organisations. This page indexes every question answered anywhere on tenhaw.com, 1424 of them across 72 pages, grouped into 51 subjects with a page of answers for each. Nothing here is a summary: each answer is the exact text from the page that owns it, and every group links back to that page for the context around it.
On this page
The firmWhat you can buyThe proofYour sectorThe alternativesThe programmes people are runningHow we deliverOn this page
How this is organised
7 families, 51 groups, 1424 answers
Buyer questions first, delivery detail last. Each group is a page carrying its own answers, and every question below is a link straight to the answer rather than to the group it sits in.
- 01The firm6 groups, 175 questions
- 02What you can buy4 groups, 167 questions
- 03The proof4 groups, 204 questions
- 04Your sector5 groups, 87 questions
- 05The alternatives7 groups, 162 questions
- 06The programmes people are running11 groups, 213 questions
- 07How we deliver14 groups, 416 questions
Or skip the categories and ask the question directly on a call.
Talk it through01 of 07 · 175 questions
The firm
What Tenhaw is, where people start, how an engagement runs, what it costs, and what your risk function will ask for.
What Tenhaw is
14 questionsThe entity questions: what the company is, what it sells, who runs it, where it works, and which well-known names on this site are clients rather than places the founder has worked.
Answered on How we engage.
- What is Tenhaw?
- Is Tenhaw an AI consultancy or a delivery partner?
- We do not use the word agentic. What kind of firm is Tenhaw?
- What does an AI delivery partner actually do?
- What does Tenhaw actually do?
- How much does Tenhaw cost?
- Who runs Tenhaw?
- What is a forward-deployed operator?
- Is Tenhaw a software product?
- How is Tenhaw different from a large consultancy?
- What size of organisation does Tenhaw work with?
- Do you work with UK enterprises only?
- Where is Tenhaw based and where does it work?
- Are HSBC, Microsoft and Sky Tenhaw clients or the founder's previous employers?
Where to start
25 questionsThe state people are in when they get here: a stalled Copilot rollout, shadow AI across the business, five tools that do not talk to each other. What we would do first in each, and how a first engagement begins.
Answered on How we engage and Getting in touch.
- How do we start working with Tenhaw?
- Why do most AI transformations fail?
- Our Copilot rollout stalled, what now?
- We have shadow AI across the business, where do we start?
- How do we assess our AI maturity?
- We have bought five AI tools that do not talk to each other
- What should AI due diligence cover?
- What actually happens on the 30-minute discovery call?
- Who will we be dealing with at Tenhaw?
- What should we prepare before a first call about an AI project?
- What happens if Tenhaw is not the right fit for our problem?
- Can we see examples of Tenhaw's work before describing our own?
- Should we email, phone or book a call?
- What is in Tenhaw's supplier assurance pack?
- Do we need to go through procurement before talking to Tenhaw?
- How quickly can an engagement start after the discovery call?
- Will contacting Tenhaw put us on a marketing list?
- Can we skip the discovery call and just commission the audit?
- Who should we bring to the discovery call?
- Do we need an NDA before we describe our problem?
- Do we need budget approved before we get in touch?
- Do you need to see our systems before you can price the work?
- Should we send an RFP rather than book a discovery call?
- We are not ready to start until next year. Is it worth talking now?
- Can our legal team redline Tenhaw's contract terms?
Staffing, cadence and exit
48 questionsHow an engagement is staffed, how often value is expected to be delivered, what happens if it is not working, and what is left behind when we go.
Answered on How we engage and The team on your engagement.
- How does Tenhaw staff an engagement?
- How often does Tenhaw deliver something?
- Does the audit price change with the size of our organisation?
- What happens if the engagement is not working?
- What happens when Tenhaw leaves?
- How does Tenhaw avoid supplier lock-in?
- How does a forward deployed engineer work inside our teams?
- What does month one with a UK AI delivery partner look like?
- Is it too early to engage if our leadership will not redesign roles yet?
- Can you just roll out the tools without changing how people work?
- Do we get documentation as well as working software?
- Why are your engagements retainers rather than milestone payments?
- Can you deliver something useful in a week?
- Are VAT and travel costs on top of your published prices?
- Do we need to free up our own engineers during the build?
- Can we see the engineering standards your engineers build to?
- How can a team of three change the way thousands of people work?
- How do you know whether people are actually using what you build?
- Is Tenhaw credible for a group-wide AI programme?
- Who should not hire Tenhaw?
- How can we verify Tenhaw's track record independently?
- What are we actually buying when we hire Tenhaw?
- Is Tenhaw a real registered company we can contract with?
- What is agentic AI?
- What is an AI agent?
- Do we pay in advance, and when are your invoices due?
- How do scope changes get agreed once the work has started?
- What does the executive sponsor actually have to do?
- Can we pause an engagement if our budget is frozen?
- Can we hire one of your people when the engagement ends?
- Is the value you commit to each month contractual?
- Will juniors be doing the work on our engagement?
- Will we get the partner who sold the work, or someone else?
- What happens if someone on the team goes off sick mid-project?
- What day rate does each role on a delivery team bill at?
- Why is the adoption lead the cheapest seat on the team?
- What do we get in writing before committing to anything?
- When do we see evidence the team has been screened?
- Will you agree not to work with a named competitor?
- How do we know you have capacity for our programme?
- Can we put a maximum tolerable outage in the contract?
- How do you choose the forward deployed engineer on our team?
- Does your team work inside our management structure or alongside it?
- What agentic work has James Rooney actually led himself?
- Why does a build team of three have only one engineer?
- How do you stop an AI rollout burning out our teams?
- Is a Tenhaw team senior enough to sit in front of our board?
- Who do we escalate to at Tenhaw if a month goes badly?
Pricing and commercials
40 questionsPublished day rates, published engagement prices, and the comparisons that flatter us least. Every competitor figure is quoted from that supplier's own published card.
Answered on Pricing and rate card.
- What do Big Four consultants charge per day in the UK?
- Is Tenhaw cheaper than the Big Four?
- How much does an AI transformation consultancy cost in the UK?
- Are contractors cheaper than a consultancy for AI work?
- What does an agentic system cost to run after the build?
- Why publish your competitors' rates?
- Does a smaller team deliver faster than a large consultancy?
- How do you get from day rates to fixed engagement prices?
- What should we check before comparing consultancy day rates?
- How much should we budget for the first year of an agentic programme?
- Are AI consultancy day rates higher than ordinary consultancy rates?
- What day rate does the £44,000 audit work out at?
- Does a lower day rate mean a cheaper project?
- Are the G-Cloud rates you quote still current?
- Do private clients pay more than these framework rates?
- Do you invoice against timesheets, or is the monthly fee flat?
- What happens if a fixed-price engagement takes longer than you thought?
- Why pay £44,000 when a large firm will scope it for free?
- How much does a forward deployed engineer cost?
- Is £70,000 a month expensive for a build team of three?
- Is Tenhaw worth the money, and how soon would we know?
- What do we get for the money that a cheaper supplier does not?
- Can we put £44,000 in an approval paper before scoping?
- Is the £44,000 audit fee credited against a later engagement?
- Is there any room to negotiate on price?
- What does this cost us in our own people's time?
- What do we need to raise a purchase order?
- Our budget year ends in March. When would the cost land?
- Do you quote in euros or dollars for work outside the UK?
- Does a higher insurance limit or extra screening add to the fee?
- If our priorities change mid-engagement, does the price change?
- What goes in the board paper to get this approved?
- Their quote is an estimate with contingency. How do we compare it?
- Their price includes platform licences. Is that a fair comparison?
- We have £50,000 this year. What can we actually buy?
- Does the spend fall in year two, or does it keep running?
- We can supply the engineers. Does the price come down?
- Is the published price binding, or just a guide?
- Does helping us recruit our permanent team cost extra?
- If we stop the audit in week two, what do we pay?
Security and assurance
30 questionsWhat procurement, legal and a second-line risk function ask before anyone signs, including the two limits we publish rather than leave you to discover at contract stage.
Answered on Security and assurance.
- Who will be on the engagement, and how are they screened?
- How does Tenhaw work inside our systems and handle our data?
- Where is our data processed, and can we require UK or EU data residency?
- Which sub-processors does Tenhaw use, and where are they located?
- What is Tenhaw's breach notification SLA?
- How is AI-generated code security checked before it ships?
- Which AI tools does Tenhaw use, and what do they do with our data?
- What is Tenhaw's contractual, insurance and liability position?
- What data does the Tenhaw website itself collect?
- What insurance does Tenhaw carry, and at what level?
- What security certifications does Tenhaw hold today?
- Our supplier policy requires ISO 27001. Can we still work with Tenhaw?
- What happens to our data when the engagement ends?
- Will our data be used to train AI models?
- Can Tenhaw work inside our own enterprise AI tenancy?
- Do Tenhaw consultants use our devices and accounts, or their own?
- What is in the supplier onboarding pack, and how fast do we get it?
- Do you penetration test the systems you build?
- Do confidentiality obligations end when the engagement does?
- Do you tell us before adding a new sub-processor?
- Your CRM is a US provider. How is that UK data residency?
- Who notifies the ICO if there is a breach, you or us?
- What do you need from us before your team can start?
- Our security questionnaire is written for SaaS vendors. Will it fit?
- How do we report a security vulnerability to Tenhaw?
- Do we get a software bill of materials for AI-generated code?
- Can our security team see what your engineers did in our systems?
- Can we restrict which AI model providers you use on our engagement?
- Will Tenhaw pass a large enterprise's third-party risk review?
- What is our exposure if a Tenhaw engagement goes wrong?
Joining the associate pool
18 questionsThe questions asked from the other side of the engagement: how someone reaches the pool, the screening before any client access, what the work looks like, and what the arrangement deliberately does not offer.
Answered on Associates.
- How do I join the Tenhaw associate pool?
- What is the screening for a Tenhaw associate?
- What does a Tenhaw engagement look like from the associate's side?
- Is a Tenhaw associate role employed or contract?
- What does Tenhaw look for in an associate?
- Do you publish how many associates Tenhaw has?
- What technology should an associate know?
- Will I be pairing with the client's engineers or building alone?
- Do I need financial services experience to be a Tenhaw associate?
- How much direct client contact does an associate have?
- What should I send instead of a covering letter?
- How long would I be on a single engagement?
- Am I expected to help recruit the client's own team?
- Will I be given access to live client data?
- What if I think a release is not ready and the client wants it out?
- If I specify a platform on a build, does Tenhaw earn anything on it?
- Do you have any associate roles open right now?
- Can I read how you actually build before getting in touch?
If your question is not in any of these, it is a good one for the call.
Talk it through02 of 07 · 167 questions
What you can buy
The five priced rungs: the two fixed-price ways in, the two delivery teams, and oversight bought on its own.
Choosing between the five engagements
22 questionsWhich rung to start on, what separates one from the next, and how a first engagement leads into a second. Asked before a buyer is on any single engagement page.
Answered on All five engagements, priced side by side.
- How do we choose between the five Tenhaw engagements?
- Do the five engagements have to run in order?
- Can we skip the audit and go straight to a build team?
- Why are some engagements fixed price and others monthly?
- Can I check the arithmetic behind each engagement price?
- Do all five engagements include an engineer who builds?
- Do we need the design team before the build team?
- What is the smallest engagement we can buy from Tenhaw?
- How many people turn up on each of the five engagements?
- Will Tenhaw run and support the system after handover?
- Which engagements come with a forward deployed engineer?
- What happens if we start on the wrong engagement?
- How long before we see something working?
- Can we run two engagements at the same time?
- Which engagement fits if the problem is adoption, not technology?
- Which of the five engagements can one budget holder approve?
- Can we swap a build team for a smaller engagement mid-programme?
- Do you discount if we buy more than one engagement?
- What stops you giving notice halfway through our programme?
- If we start with the audit, do we go through procurement again?
- What happens to the engagement if our sponsor leaves?
- Is there a minimum term on the monthly engagements?
The audit and the proof of concept
60 questionsThe two fixed-price ways in: what is in scope, what each costs, who turns up, and how each one ends.
Answered on AI Readiness Audit and Agentic Proof of Concept.
- What is an AI readiness audit?
- What does the audit actually look at?
- How much does an AI readiness assessment cost in the UK?
- Should we start with the audit or a proof of concept?
- Who from Tenhaw actually does the work?
- Should we hire a Head of AI or run an audit first?
- What is included in the £44,000 audit price?
- Can the audit sort out the AI tools we have already bought?
- What does an AI readiness audit deliver in four weeks?
- How do you assess whether a data estate is ready for agentic AI?
- How do you work out where AI will not deliver value?
- Which stakeholders need to be involved in an AI readiness audit?
- How do you baseline current operating costs so AI savings can be measured later?
- What security constraints are examined before an AI build starts?
- Can an audit tell us whether our engineering team can build AI-native?
- How does this compare with an AI strategy engagement from a large consultancy?
- How do you make sure an audit ends in engineering work rather than slides?
- What is the return on £44,000 spent before committing to a build?
- Can the audit be used as AI due diligence before an acquisition?
- Is an agent readiness audit the same as an AI readiness audit?
- Can you audit a programme our current AI supplier is already building?
- What happens in the weeks after the audit readout?
- How many hours a week does the audit ask of our teams?
- Is the readout a document or a session with our board?
- Is the heat map a score out of five, or is there evidence behind it?
- Is four weeks long enough for an organisation our size?
- What if our board challenges the numbers in the investment case?
- If the audit says do not proceed, do we still pay the £44,000?
- Does the costed plan go stale if we sit on it for six months?
- Do the prototypes cost us anything to run after the audit ends?
- Can we put the audit prototypes straight into production?
- What if our data access is not ready when week two starts?
- What is an agentic proof of concept?
- How can a proof of concept take only two weeks?
- Will our own engineers learn anything, or do you hand over a black box?
- What does an agentic proof of concept cost?
- Can we contract your engineers by the day instead?
- What happens if the proof of concept fails?
- What decides whether we pay £20k or £55k?
- What do you need from us during a proof of concept?
- What happens week by week in a proof of concept?
- Does a proof of concept commit us to anything afterwards?
- When is an agentic proof of concept the wrong thing to buy?
- Can a proof of concept cover more than one workflow?
- Our requirements are out of date. Can we still start?
- What does a forward-deployed AI engineer do on a proof of concept?
- Do real users test the system before the proof of concept ends?
- What do we show the board at the end of a proof of concept?
- Who builds the production version after the proof of concept?
- Who pays if a fixed-price proof of concept overruns?
- A software vendor offered us a free proof of concept. Why pay for yours?
- Will a proof of concept still work at our real volumes?
- Can a proof of concept run on masked or synthetic data?
- How do we agree what counts as working before we sign?
- How long does it take to get a proof of concept into production?
- If the system breaks a month after you leave, who fixes it?
- Our engineers could try this themselves. Why pay for two weeks of yours?
- Whose AI model licences does the build run on?
- Does the fee come off the price if we go on to a build?
- Should we pick our biggest workflow or our simplest one?
The design pair and the build team
57 questionsThe two monthly delivery rungs: a pair designing the operating model and the agentic architecture, and a team of three building inside your estate under partner oversight.
Answered on Agentic Design Team and Agentic Build Team.
- What is an AI-native operating model?
- Is this target operating model (TOM) design?
- Why design the operating model and the infrastructure together?
- Do you provide an interim Head of AI?
- Why a team of two rather than one?
- How do you decide what humans own versus what agents own?
- Do you build the system as well, or only design it?
- How is the £35k–£55k monthly fee worked out?
- What happens month to month on a design engagement?
- Do we have to build with Tenhaw after the design phase?
- How do we stop each function building its own agent platform?
- Our AI work is one team and one pilot. Are we too small for this?
- How do you show measurable value in a month of design work?
- What happens if our CTO disagrees with the architecture?
- What does a full design engagement cost in total?
- If we give notice after month one, what do we actually have?
- Could our own enterprise architects do this instead?
- We already have a target operating model. Does that shorten the work?
- How much executive time does a design engagement need?
- What if two directors both think they own the same decision?
- We already have a transformation programme running. Where does this fit?
- Can you design this for one division rather than the whole group?
- How do we get a rolling monthly engagement through procurement?
- Can two people design an operating model for a group our size?
- Do you need access to our production data to design the architecture?
- Can our engineers keep building while the design runs?
- What if we have already committed to an AI platform?
- Who keeps the operating model current after you leave?
- Who is actually on an agentic build team?
- What is an interim agentic lead?
- Can we take the agentic lead on their own, without the rest of the team?
- How often does the team deliver something?
- What stops us becoming dependent on Tenhaw?
- How much does an agentic build team cost?
- How is the price of an agentic build team worked out?
- Can we make the build team bigger if we need more capacity?
- How long does an agentic build team engagement last?
- Do we keep the code if we end the engagement early?
- What does a forward deployed engineer actually do?
- Why not just hire three permanent people instead?
- Do we still pay for a month you report as failed?
- Who from our side needs to be involved in month one?
- Is partner oversight part of the monthly fee or extra?
- We already have a Head of AI. Does a build team still fit?
- Are governance and audit trails built in or added later?
- Who agrees what counts as measurable value each month?
- What is a forward deployed engineer?
- Do our own engineers review and merge the code your engineer writes?
- Our releases go through a change advisory board. Does that slow the cadence?
- Do our engineers need AI experience to pair with yours?
- What if our engineers push back on pairing with an outside team?
- What does procurement actually sign for a build team?
- What if our permanent team is not hired when you are due to leave?
- How much of our engineers' time does the pairing take?
- Our data is a mess. Do we need to fix that before a build team starts?
- Your team builds with AI tools. Why does that still cost £70,000 a month?
- Can we try the build team for one month before committing?
Programme and delivery management
28 questionsOversight bought on its own, with no requirement that Tenhaw builds any of the programme, including programmes another supplier is building.
Answered on Programme & Delivery Management.
- Will Tenhaw manage a programme it is not building?
- Can you supply an AI programme manager without building anything?
- Can I hire a fractional AI delivery lead?
- How do you avoid a conflict of interest when you are also a supplier?
- What does programme management for an AI transformation cost?
- Why does an agentic consultancy offer programme management?
- Can you take over a programme that is already in trouble?
- What does the monthly board report contain?
- Can we bring programme governance back in-house later?
- What do we get for £18,000 a month versus £35,000?
- Why pay for governance instead of putting the money into more delivery?
- Our systems integrator offered to run the PMO. Why not let them?
- Who do you need access to in the first four weeks?
- What if a supplier will not share their delivery data?
- We already have a programme director. Do we still need this?
- How much of our team's time does the governance take each month?
- Can you cover a vacant delivery director seat while we recruit?
- How early would the board hear that a benefit is going to be missed?
- Isn't this just an expensive project manager?
- What happens to the governance if we change build supplier mid-programme?
- Will you govern a transformation programme that isn't about AI?
- Do we have to move our delivery data into your tools?
- Could a programme dashboard do this instead of paying for a person?
- Our board wants one date, not a range. Does this work for them?
- How does this sit with the PMO we already have?
- Do you govern our internal teams as well as outside suppliers?
- What if the board sees the pack and nothing changes?
- Are the first four weeks just a paid review of ourselves?
If your question is not in any of these, it is a good one for the call.
Talk it through03 of 07 · 204 questions
The proof
The engagements the rest of this site cites, grouped by the kind of work rather than by client. Each write-up states its limit as plainly as its result.
Reading the case studies
24 questionsHow to read the write-ups as one body of work rather than one at a time: what the attribution note covers, and what the set is and is not evidence of.
Answered on All 12 engagements.
- Why does an AI consultancy lead with delivery case studies?
- Which of the twelve engagements were delivered under the Tenhaw banner?
- Are the results in these case studies from production systems or pilots?
- Why is one of Tenhaw's case studies anonymous?
- Is Tenhaw running an agentic engagement right now?
- What measurable results are in Tenhaw's case studies?
- What sectors do Tenhaw's case studies cover?
- Has Tenhaw run delivery across multiple countries and time zones?
- What is the largest scale in Tenhaw's track record?
- What would an engagement like the insurance case study cost?
- How long did the engagements in these case studies run?
- Which case studies cover operating model design rather than delivery?
- What did clients keep once these engagements ended?
- What kind of problem does Tenhaw usually get called into?
- Do you publish client names in case studies?
- Has Tenhaw built AI inside a client's own infrastructure?
- What can we check about Tenhaw before we book a call?
- Has Tenhaw ever told a client not to build something?
- Both your AI case studies are in financial services. Does that transfer?
- What should we ask someone who has worked with Tenhaw before?
- How much of these results was Tenhaw's work rather than the client's?
- Your flagship AI build is still a proof of concept. What gets it to production?
- How much of our own people's time did these engagements take?
- Do we have to commit to a multi-month engagement like these?
The data and AI engagements
60 questionsFour engagements whose deliverable was information a leadership team then acted on: an agentic proof of concept, an AI voice platform, the data and simulation work behind a hydrogen business case, and operational reporting that cut lead times. Two of the four had AI in them, and each write-up says which.
Answered on London specialty insurance market, HSBC AI Voice Insights, Anglo American and Globelynx.
- Why is the client in this case study not named?
- Is the twelve months to two weeks comparison fair?
- What does the 70% figure in this case study mean?
- Is the insurance proof of concept in production yet?
- What did month one of the insurance engagement involve?
- What would this insurance engagement cost at published rates?
- What happened before any code was written on the insurance build?
- How does the pipeline decide which records a human reviews?
- Who owns the business rules in the document pipeline?
- Can AI validate entity resolution output automatically?
- How does a specialty insurance AI implementation run month by month?
- What does a London specialty insurance AI strategy need beyond tool licences?
- How was security handled on a two-week AI build in a regulated estate?
- Why move delivery from Azure DevOps boards to GitHub?
- Why not just send whole PDFs to the model?
- Is voice analytics experience relevant to building AI agents?
- Is the 1.5 million hours a year figure at HSBC a real saving?
- What did the HSBC voice insights proof of concept actually build?
- Did HSBC's voice insights platform go into production?
- How was privacy handled when analysing HSBC's voice data?
- What insight is hiding in a bank's recorded calls and meetings?
- Why involve risk and operations before an AI prototype is finished?
- Can voice data become a source of business intelligence?
- How long did the HSBC voice insights proof of concept take?
- Can one proof of concept change a bank's AI strategy?
- Why not just use the meeting summariser in our conferencing tool?
- Why analyse recorded calls when we already survey our customers?
- What does entity recognition actually do on a customer call?
- Should we start with meeting summaries or trend dashboards?
- Do you need to analyse every call, or is a sample enough?
- What did Tenhaw do for Anglo American?
- Did Anglo American prove hydrogen-powered mining was viable?
- What is First Mode and where does Tenhaw fit in its story?
- How do you run delivery when there is no precedent to copy?
- How do you stand up a delivery function when there is no precedent to copy?
- How did the hydrogen programme stay aligned across three continents?
- Why replace a project plan with outcome-based milestones?
- Why was finding hydrogen trucks not yet cost-competitive a good outcome?
- How can delivery data underpin a £40bn business case?
- Can agile work for PhD-level specialists?
- Where does a mining AI digital transformation usually stall?
- Why did the Anglo American engagement run for 18 months?
- What goes wrong when a big company launches an internal startup?
- What should we ask a partner before a first-of-a-kind programme?
- How do we test the economics before funding a big AI programme?
- What did Tenhaw do for Globelynx?
- How did Globelynx cut delivery lead times by 60%?
- Is a 60% reduction in delivery lead times believable?
- What transfers from a delivery engagement into agentic work?
- Where did the £100k of supplier savings at Globelynx come from?
- Why do AI business cases quietly fail in year two?
- What would the Globelynx engagement be sold as today?
- Has Tenhaw worked with media and broadcast companies?
- How do you give leadership operational data they will actually act on?
- Should we time a process before automating it?
- How do you stop internal projects being starved by client work?
- Does client satisfaction drop when you speed up delivery?
- Can we take on more client work without hiring more people?
- Should the person running delivery also negotiate with suppliers?
- How do you spot a dependency before it wrecks a delivery date?
Operating models rebuilt at scale
60 questionsFour engagements that changed how an organisation was arranged rather than what it shipped: a $450M portfolio across 500 teams, a CIO's own executive team, a PMO built from nothing to govern 19 projects, and global delivery made plannable across three regions.
Answered on HSBC Global Payment Solutions, HSBC executive ways of working, Tecknuovo and Yondr.
- Was the HSBC payments operating model a Tenhaw engagement?
- How do you design one operating model for 500 teams?
- Why pilot an operating model before rolling it out?
- Has the HSBC payments operating model rolled out yet?
- What goes wrong when every region runs its own delivery processes?
- What did six months of operating model work at HSBC cover?
- How do you keep executives aligned during an operating model redesign?
- What should an operating model's dashboards actually measure?
- What does payments operating model work have to do with agentic AI?
- Does agile actually work across hundreds of teams in a bank?
- Is a banking AI target operating model worth it for a smaller bank?
- How do you get teams to give up processes they built themselves?
- What should you standardise first when every team delivers differently?
- What should we ask a firm proposing an operating model redesign?
- Should we just roll out our best region's way of working?
- Does agile work at executive level, or only for delivery teams?
- What does a Scrum Master for an executive team actually do?
- Do executives have time for a daily stand-up?
- How do you give a CIO visibility across 150 teams?
- Why does annual planning always overrun, and what fixes it?
- How do you clear blockers that have sat for weeks?
- How long does it take to change how an executive team works?
- How do you rebuild executive confidence in a delivery organisation?
- Why do Tenhaw's case studies include work James did at HSBC?
- What has executive ways of working got to do with AI transformation?
- What does a banking AI target operating model need from the executive team?
- How do you stop technology and operations tripping over each other?
- Is an executive Scrum Master just a chief of staff by another name?
- How do you stop an executive stand-up becoming another status meeting?
- How much does it cost to have someone run an executive delivery rhythm?
- How long does it take to build a PMO from scratch?
- What did Tenhaw do for Tecknuovo?
- Does Tenhaw take on work for other consultancies?
- Has Tenhaw worked on HMRC or MOD programmes?
- How many projects can one PMO team realistically oversee?
- Can you coach our junior delivery leads during a live engagement?
- Who runs the PMO after the consultants leave?
- What should a portfolio management office actually track?
- Does portfolio governance experience transfer to a technology programme?
- Does upskilling our own people slow the delivery down?
- Does stronger delivery governance help win public sector work?
- Should government and commercial projects run to the same standard?
- Is it worth building a PMO for just a handful of projects?
- How do you get delivery teams to actually use a new PMO?
- What should we ask a firm offering to build our PMO?
- What did Tenhaw do for Yondr?
- Why could Yondr not plan beyond a single quarter?
- How long does it take to make erratic delivery predictable?
- Can delivery coaching work remotely across time zones?
- Why fix delivery predictability before bringing in AI?
- Our estimates are always wrong. How do we fix that?
- Can support and security teams become predictable too?
- Was the Yondr work delivered by Tenhaw itself?
- Do agile ceremonies actually make delivery more predictable?
- Why does sprint predictability matter to a data centre business?
- Do you fix delivery one region at a time or everywhere at once?
- Why not just hire an agile coach instead of a consultancy?
- Won't teams inflate their Story Points once you measure output?
- What happens if our priorities keep changing mid-sprint?
- How do you tell a real delivery improvement from one good quarter?
Delivery made predictable
60 questionsFour engagements where the work was already happening and nobody could say when it would land: a launch held to a date the CEO had announced, an app team that had lost the business's trust, three merged teams becoming one, and five teams through a £1bn re-platform.
Answered on Discovery, Greggs, Colart and YOOX NET-A-PORTER.
- Was the Discovery+ launch a Tenhaw engagement or James's own role?
- How do you hit a launch date the CEO has already announced?
- What are Happy, Normal and Sad path forecasts?
- Does telling leadership a launch will probably miss backfire?
- Why adjust Story Point estimates after the work is completed?
- What do you do when one team is the bottleneck on a big launch?
- Did the Discovery teams learn to run the forecasting themselves?
- Why does probabilistic forecasting matter for an AI transformation?
- How long does it take before leadership trusts a delivery forecast?
- Are daily delivery recommendations overkill under a hard deadline?
- Does hitting a fixed launch date always cost quality?
- Does delivery forecasting work for design and content teams?
- Who needs to see a delivery forecast for it to change anything?
- Won't teams game their estimates once forecasts drive decisions?
- Should a delivery lead run the team or advise from the outside?
- What did Tenhaw actually deliver at Greggs?
- What has coaching a delivery team got to do with agentic change?
- Did Tenhaw exist when the Greggs work was delivered?
- How do you rebuild trust between a technical team and the rest of the business?
- How do you prove paying down tech debt speeds up delivery?
- Why do rushed app launches cause delivery problems later?
- Does agile coaching work outside engineering teams?
- Why does team credibility matter before starting an AI programme?
- What would a Greggs-style engagement cost from Tenhaw today?
- How do you get prioritisation decisions based on value rather than politics?
- Does retail tech debt have to be paid down before AI modernisation?
- Is our delivery problem the team or the way they work?
- Should Marketing be in the prioritisation workshop, or just Product?
- What happens if the delivery data makes the team look bad?
- How do you tell whether agile coaching actually worked?
- What did Tenhaw do for Colart?
- Why do merged teams stop delivering after a reorganisation?
- Can agile work across marketing, development and business intelligence teams?
- Is it worth redesigning Jira workflows around how the business works?
- How does a mature backlog reduce downtime?
- How do you prioritise when newly merged teams disagree?
- How long does it take to align merged teams into one delivery unit?
- Did Colart's e-commerce platform actually ship?
- What does a workflow design engagement have to do with agentic AI?
- Was the Colart work delivered by Tenhaw or by James personally?
- Does a retail AI operating model start with the team or the technology?
- Can't our own delivery managers fix a stalled merged team?
- What if senior leaders ignore the issues a team escalates?
- What does fixing a team's communication channels actually involve?
- How do you stop merged teams quietly re-forming as silos?
- What did Tenhaw do at YOOX NET-A-PORTER?
- How do you coordinate five agile teams on one programme?
- Do agile programmes still need a PMO?
- How big was the YNAP re-platforming programme?
- What platform did YNAP move its e-commerce to?
- What does a £1bn re-platform have to do with agentic AI?
- How do you keep a client PMO and supplier delivery teams aligned?
- How do you keep a programme moving through staff changes?
- Do you have large-scale e-commerce delivery experience?
- Did the YNAP re-platform hit its deadlines?
- Does a retail AI operating model have to cover our delivery partners?
- What does a PMO take off a delivery team's plate?
- How does a PMO hold teams to a date without line authority?
- What breaks first when a programme grows past two or three teams?
- Do five agile teams all need the same sprint cadence?
If your question is not in any of these, it is a good one for the call.
Talk it through04 of 07 · 87 questions
Your sector
Where the regime, the procurement route or the operation decides the order of the work.
Whether sector experience matters
15 questionsWhether a supplier has to have worked in your sector before, and which parts of an agentic programme genuinely change when it has.
Answered on All sectors.
- Is sector knowledge or delivery experience more important for agentic AI?
- Which sectors does Tenhaw work in?
- Why does Tenhaw list only four sectors?
- Are there sectors Tenhaw would turn down?
- How does agentic AI delivery differ between regulated and unregulated sectors?
- What if our sector is not one of the four you list?
- Do UK regulators have specific rules for AI agents?
- Do agentic AI use cases transfer between sectors?
- How can we tell if an AI consultancy's sector experience is real?
- Do agents pay back faster in some sectors than others?
- Does an agentic programme cost more in a regulated sector?
- Which of our own functions has to be in the design from week one?
- What happens when an agent's autonomy widens after the pilot?
- How many regulations does an AI programme have to answer to in our sector?
- We span three of these sectors. Do we run one AI programme or three?
Financial services regulation
7 questionsConsumer Duty, SS1/23, DORA, Solvency II and SM&CR, applied to decisions an agent makes rather than to the model that makes them.
Answered on Financial Services.
- How do banks govern AI agent decisions?
- Does Consumer Duty apply to decisions made by AI agents?
- What does the FCA expect when an AI agent makes a customer-facing decision?
- How does SS1/23 apply to agentic systems?
- Does DORA cover AI suppliers?
- What does Solvency II require of AI in underwriting?
- How does SM&CR affect AI agent deployment?
Agents in banking and insurance
11 questionsWhere an agent can and cannot be put to work in a regulated firm: onboarding, monitoring, claims, credit, complaints and underwriting triage.
Answered on Financial Services.
- Do you work with insurers, or only banks?
- Where should a bank start with agentic AI?
- Has Tenhaw delivered AI in a regulated bank?
- Can AI agents do KYC and customer onboarding?
- Where do AI agents help with anti-money-laundering and transaction monitoring?
- Can an AI agent handle an insurance claim?
- Can AI agents make credit decisions?
- Can agents handle complaints, and what does Consumer Duty require?
- How does AI help with underwriting submission triage?
- Does an FCA AI governance framework satisfy the PRA too?
- How does delegated authority change a London specialty insurance AI build?
The public sector
18 questionsWhere procurement rules and public accountability set the shape of the work before anyone opens a technical question.
Answered on Public Sector and Government.
- Does Tenhaw work with the public sector?
- What does the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard require of an AI supplier?
- Can a government department let an AI agent decide a case?
- How is agentic AI bought in UK government?
- Did Cabinet Office spend controls end, and what replaced them for AI projects?
- What should a department ask an agentic AI supplier to evidence?
- Has Tenhaw delivered an AI system inside a government department?
- Is the AI Playbook for the UK Government mandatory?
- What can a department automate before touching casework decisions?
- Can a department extend an AI proof of concept into a production contract?
- What actually slows down public sector AI transformation in the UK?
- What happens when the NAO or a select committee asks about our AI system?
- Do we need a delivery model assessment for an agentic AI project?
- When should commercial and legal join a government AI project?
- What if a citizen challenges a decision our agent helped make?
- Will an AI readiness audit produce evidence our assurance gate accepts?
- Do your people hold security clearance for government work?
- Do the UK government AI rules apply to councils too?
Retail, industry and energy
36 questionsThe questions asked where the work sits in operations, the supply chain and the estate rather than inside a regulated process.
Answered on Retail, Consumer and Media and Industrial, Energy and Infrastructure.
- Where do retailers get the fastest return from AI agents?
- Does UK consumer law apply to product descriptions written by AI?
- Do we need a DPIA for an AI agent that uses customer data?
- Who owns the rights to content generated by an AI model?
- How do you run an AI programme around peak trading?
- What is different about frontline versus head office AI adoption?
- Can we use AI to summarise customer reviews?
- Can we let an AI agent run pricing and promotions on its own?
- Can we use past order data to train a recommendation model?
- Which retailers and media brands has Tenhaw worked with?
- What does a retail AI operating model look like in practice?
- Why do AI demand forecasts go wrong around promotions?
- Can agents take on supply chain exception handling?
- How do you stop a customer-facing agent becoming a PR incident?
- How do retailers justify AI spend when margins are thin?
- Can AI take over the manual reporting from stores and field teams?
- Is agentic AI in retail an IT project or a trading one?
- Does the Online Safety Act apply to AI features in our app?
- Where do industrial businesses get value from AI agents?
- Can an AI agent be part of a safety case?
- Does NIS2 apply to AI systems in industrial operations?
- What do ISO/IEC 42001 and the NIST AI RMF actually require?
- How do you run agentic transformation across distributed engineering teams?
- Has Tenhaw worked in heavy industry?
- Can an AI pilot use data from our plant historian?
- Our bottleneck is a handful of senior specialists. Can agents help?
- Our technical documentation is on-premise and unstructured. Can agents use it?
- How do you show AI value when capital cycles run in years?
- Can an agent write anything into our control system?
- What happens if the model gets updated after we sign off a workflow?
- How do we stop an AI tool drifting into safety-critical use?
- Which teams need to be in the room: OT security, safety or engineering?
- Can agents take the coordination load off teams in three time zones?
- Can an agent pull capital project reporting together across a programme?
- Can agents assemble compliance evidence across sites and systems?
- Our specialists have no spare time. How much of it will you need?
If your question is not in any of these, it is a good one for the call.
Talk it through05 of 07 · 162 questions
The alternatives
Other suppliers, hiring your own people, or running it internally. Each comparison names the case where the alternative wins.
Us against the Big Four
21 questionsA global consultancy against a firm this size, on price, pace and what a fixed-price audit actually buys, including the engagements where they are the right buy and we say so on the page.
Answered on Tenhaw vs Big Four.
- Should we hire a Big Four consultancy or a boutique for AI transformation?
- What explains the price gap between a boutique audit and a Big Four assessment?
- Can Tenhaw work alongside an incumbent Big Four supplier?
- When is a Big Four firm the right choice?
- How do we justify a boutique to our board?
- Can Tenhaw give us a reference client running an agentic system in production?
- Should one firm design the operating model and another build it?
- What does a Big Four AI engagement leave behind when it ends?
- Can a small consultancy get through our procurement and legal review?
- Do we need a Big Four firm for AI in financial services?
- Who actually does the work on a Big Four AI engagement?
- Is Accenture one of the Big Four consultancies?
- Who makes sure our people actually use the agents?
- Why would a consultancy recruit the team that replaces it?
- Why do quarterly phase gates hold back an agentic programme?
- Will a Big Four firm write any of the code?
- Can a four-week audit help us write a better Big Four brief?
- We already have a Big Four operating model. Can you build it?
- Do the Big Four deliberately drag work out?
- Does a smaller team really finish sooner?
- You publish day rates. Does the same criticism apply to you?
Us against a boutique AI consultancy
18 questionsThe nearest comparison we have, and the one where the differences are narrowest. Stated as they are rather than as we would like them.
Answered on Tenhaw vs AI boutiques.
- What makes an AI transformation consultancy different from an AI build shop?
- How do we evaluate an AI consultancy?
- Why does prior non-AI transformation experience matter?
- Is Tenhaw the cheapest option?
- Which UK AI consultancies should we shortlist alongside Tenhaw?
- What is the difference between an AI product company and an AI consultancy?
- Do we need a consultancy with its own machine learning research team?
- Should we hire separate firms for AI strategy and AI build?
- Does an AI consultancy need experience in our sector?
- Will an AI consultancy handle the internal politics for us?
- Is Tenhaw too new to trust with an agentic programme?
- Do we need a Databricks or Microsoft partner for our AI programme?
- Should we run a paid trial with two shortlisted AI consultancies?
- How do we tell if the blocker is capability or adoption?
- Does a consultancy's own AI platform get us live faster?
- What mandate does an embedded AI consultancy need from us?
- Can we trust a comparison written by one of the firms in it?
- We need enterprise search and data governance. Are you the right firm?
Offshore delivery partners
18 questionsWhere an offshore model is the cheaper answer and where the coordination cost eats the saving, with the case for them stated on the page rather than around it.
Answered on Tenhaw vs Offshore partners.
- Should we use an offshore or nearshore delivery partner for agentic AI?
- Is offshore development cheaper for AI work?
- What is the difference between offshore and nearshore for AI delivery?
- What does offshore delivery struggle with on an agentic programme?
- Can we use an offshore partner and Tenhaw at the same time?
- Does our data have to leave the UK if we go offshore?
- Will an offshore partner document the work better than a small team?
- Should we go offshore if the programme needs twenty engineers, not three?
- Do we need follow-the-sun coverage for an agentic AI programme?
- Who handles adoption and role changes if the build goes offshore?
- Will an offshore partner fix the price of an agentic build?
- How much bigger can an offshore team be before the saving disappears?
- Who is accountable for whether the workflow works, not just the tickets?
- How do we know a specification is settled enough to hand offshore?
- Our offshore partner offers an onshore lead. Is that enough?
- Our offshore build is running late. Would moving it onshore fix that?
- Which of our people will an offshore team need most in month one?
- Can an offshore team fix the data quality problems an agent exposes?
Hiring contractors instead
19 questionsDay rate against day rate, and what a contractor market gives you that a firm does not, including the situations where hiring contractors is the better answer.
Answered on Tenhaw vs Contractors.
- Should we hire AI contractors directly or use a consultancy?
- Contractor day rates look half yours. What am I missing?
- How many contractors do we need to replace a consultancy team?
- What goes wrong when you staff an agentic programme with contractors?
- Can Tenhaw work alongside contractors we already have?
- Does buying a service instead of hiring contractors change our off-payroll position?
- Is one good contractor for a year better value than a consultancy?
- What happens to the knowledge when a contractor leaves?
- Can we get a fixed price from contractors?
- Who handles security screening if we hire contractors directly?
- What stops us paying for a month that produced nothing?
- How do we cost the time it takes to manage contractors?
- What does month one look like if we buy a team instead of hiring contractors?
- Which is quicker to scale back, contractors or your team?
- What should we ask an AI contractor at interview?
- Can we run the audit and then hire contractors to build it?
- Who carries the risk if a contractor-built system does not work?
- Can we hand what you build to contractors when the engagement ends?
- Is a forward deployed engineer just a contractor with a different name?
Building the team in-house
18 questionsThe permanent hire, honestly compared: what it costs, how long it takes to stand up, and why it is the right answer more often than a supplier will tell you.
Answered on Tenhaw vs Hiring in-house.
- Should we hire a Chief AI Officer or use an interim?
- How long does it take to hire an AI transformation leader in the UK?
- What does a Chief AI Officer cost in the UK?
- Will Tenhaw help us hire our permanent team?
- What if we hire someone and they leave?
- What roles do we need to hire for an agentic AI programme?
- What is the difference between an AI engineer, an ML engineer and a data scientist?
- Do we need to hire a prompt engineer?
- How do we write the job spec for an AI leadership role?
- Is an interim AI lead worth it over three years?
- We have someone internal who could step up. Should we promote them?
- Do we need a dedicated AI leader, or can our CTO own it?
- Will bringing in an interim put off strong permanent candidates?
- Can an outsider actually have decision rights in our organisation?
- Our search is six months in. Is it still worth bridging the gap?
- Why is it so hard to hire someone who has shipped agentic AI?
- What should we ask a Chief AI Officer candidate at interview?
- What would the first nine months with an interim look like?
Running it with an internal AI taskforce
18 questionsDoing it with the people you already have: what an internal taskforce is good at, and what it tends to run into.
Answered on Tenhaw vs Internal taskforce.
- Why do internal AI taskforces stall?
- Why does AI adoption plateau around 30%?
- Should we run an internal taskforce before hiring a consultancy?
- How do we know when to bring in outside help?
- What does an internal AI taskforce need to succeed?
- How long before an internal taskforce hits the scaling wall?
- Who should be on an internal AI taskforce?
- Who should own AI once the taskforce has proved it works?
- Why pay for a proof of concept when the taskforce costs nothing?
- What happens to our taskforce if we bring you in?
- Is the work our taskforce already built wasted?
- Why do separate teams end up building incompatible AI tools?
- What do we do when risk and audit start blocking our AI pilots?
- Does a readiness audit tell us anything our taskforce has not?
- Is an AI centre of excellence better than a taskforce?
- What should we measure to tell whether the taskforce is working?
- Should the taskforce be full-time or a side-of-desk job?
- Are we too big for a taskforce to carry this on its own?
Choosing an AI consultancy
50 questionsThe questions asked before any supplier is shortlisted: how to choose between firms, whether to buy a supplier at all, and what the alternatives to the named large firms actually are.
Answered on How to choose, Build, buy, or build with someone and The named firms.
- What is the best AI consultancy in the UK?
- How do you choose an AI consultancy in the UK?
- What contract terms matter most when hiring an AI consultancy?
- How do you tell if an AI consultancy builds or only advises?
- Which AI consultancies work with UK enterprises over 10,000 staff?
- Who does agentic AI delivery for UK banks?
- Best AI transformation partner for a UK government department?
- Which AI consultancy suits a UK retailer?
- Who can run an agentic programme across three countries?
- Who should a Lloyd's market insurer hire for agentic AI?
- Is a 500-person UK business too small for an AI consultancy?
- Who does agentic AI for a UK energy or mining business?
- Can a UK AI consultancy deliver for a European group?
- Who does agentic AI delivery for UK media companies?
- What should an RFP for agentic AI work actually ask for?
- How do we compare bids priced fixed, monthly and by the day?
- How do we judge which supplier picked the right first workflow?
- What should we ask a supplier's reference client?
- Our incumbent supplier says they can do agentic AI too. How do we test that?
- Should we agree the follow-on price before the pilot starts?
- How do we brief suppliers before we can give them our data?
- Should we build or buy agentic AI?
- When is buying an AI product the right choice?
- When should we build agentic AI in-house?
- Can we buy the commodity parts and build the differentiated ones?
- What does it mean to have someone build agentic AI with you?
- Is it cheaper to build or buy an agentic system?
- What are the alternatives to Accenture for AI delivery?
- Is a boutique cheaper than Deloitte for an AI programme?
- Tenhaw vs EY: which fits an agentic AI build?
- Who are Tenhaw's competitors?
- How do we shortlist Tenhaw and a global firm for the same brief?
- KPMG vs a specialist for AI governance work?
- PwC quoted us a day rate. How does it compare with yours?
- Does PA Consulting cost less than a Big Four firm for AI work?
- TCS or a UK boutique for an agentic AI build?
- Do we need McKinsey for an AI strategy, or can we start with a build?
- BCG X or a specialist firm to build our agents?
- Should Accenture or a specialist productionise the pilot we already built?
- Accenture or Deloitte for agentic AI: how do they compare?
- Is EY cheaper than KPMG on published day rates?
- Should the Big Four firm that audits us build our AI as well?
- Tenhaw or Faculty for an agentic AI programme?
- Tenhaw vs ThoughtWorks for building agentic software?
- We shortlisted BJSS and Tenhaw. What settles it?
- Kainos or Tenhaw for a multi-year digital programme?
- Do we need a public sector specialist like Made Tech for one workflow?
- Our shortlist has Slalom and Tenhaw. What actually differs?
- How do we compare Tenhaw and Capgemini on price?
- Is Tenhaw just a pricier version of an Infosys team?
If your question is not in any of these, it is a good one for the call.
Talk it through06 of 07 · 213 questions
The programmes people are running
The agentic patterns enterprises are attempting now, and where each one stalls.
Using the pattern guides
15 questionsWhich pattern applies to the problem in front of you, what the evidence label on each guide means, and what to do with one once you have picked it.
Answered on All pattern guides.
- What do Tenhaw's agentic AI guides actually cover?
- How do I know which guide to start with?
- What do the Delivered and Our approach labels on the guides mean?
- Which agentic AI patterns has Tenhaw actually delivered?
- Which guides matter most to a regulated financial services firm?
- Do the guides cite sources you can check?
- Do the guides name actual tools and systems, or stay vendor-neutral?
- Are the guides just marketing for Tenhaw's services?
- What is the next step if a guide describes our problem?
- What if none of the guides covers our problem?
- When is Tenhaw the right firm for a first-of-its-kind build?
- Do I have to read a whole guide to get the answer?
- Can we use these guides to pressure-test a plan we have been sold?
- Are the guides up to date, or written once and left?
- Are the guides any use before we have run a pilot?
Document and voice intelligence
36 questionsTurning documents and conversations into something a business can act on: what each pattern is, what it takes to stand one up, and where it stalls.
Answered on Document intelligence to business intelligence and Voice agents and conversation intelligence.
- How long does a document intelligence proof of concept take?
- Why do document extraction projects stall after the demo?
- Our document AI proof of concept worked and never shipped. What now?
- What accuracy is good enough for document intelligence?
- Do we need to fix our data platform before doing this?
- What is intelligent document processing?
- How do you establish ground truth for document extraction?
- What does a good document extraction pipeline look like?
- How do you stop human review becoming the bottleneck in document AI?
- Does it matter which cloud we use for document intelligence?
- We already have an OCR tool. What would document intelligence add?
- How much does an intelligent document processing project cost?
- Which document type should we start with?
- Who from the business needs to be involved in a document AI project?
- Will it handle tables and awkward layouts in our PDFs?
- What happens when a document format changes after go-live?
- Do our documents leave our own cloud during processing?
- How do we trace a dashboard number back to the source document?
- What is conversation intelligence?
- Can we use our existing call recordings to train or run AI analysis?
- What makes real-time voice agents hard?
- Has Tenhaw delivered voice AI?
- Should we start with call analytics or a live voice agent?
- Is sentiment analysis on customer calls reliable?
- How should a voice agent hand off to a human?
- How do you choose a speech-to-text provider for a contact centre?
- How do you analyse years of call recordings with AI?
- What are the benefits of AI call analytics for a contact centre?
- Do call recordings have to stay in the UK to be analysed?
- Will an off-the-shelf call analytics tool do, or do we need a build?
- How much does a conversation intelligence pilot cost?
- Who needs to be involved before we analyse call recordings?
- Will call handlers see AI call analysis as surveillance?
- How do you set a latency budget for a voice agent?
- Won't customers hate talking to an AI voice agent?
- Can a voice agent actually do things, or only answer questions?
End-to-end agentic workflow
18 questionsHanding a whole process to agents rather than a single step: what changes, what has to be decided first, and where these programmes stop.
Answered on End-to-end agentic workflow implementation.
- What technology stack does Tenhaw build agentic systems on?
- Do we need Kubernetes, Terraform or Airflow to run agents?
- What is an end-to-end agentic workflow?
- How do you scale AI agents across an enterprise?
- Why doesn't AI assistance reduce our cycle times?
- Where do end-to-end agentic implementations usually fail?
- How do you decide which decisions agents can take?
- How do you handle exceptions in an agentic workflow?
- Do our existing approval processes work for AI agents?
- Should we build an AI platform before deploying our first agents?
- Which process should we take agentic first?
- Nobody owns our process end to end. Can we still start?
- What happens to the team that runs the process today?
- We are on AWS, not Azure. Can you still deliver this?
- Should the whole workflow be an agent, or only part of it?
- How do we prove the cycle time actually came down?
- Do we need a fresh risk sign-off for every agent we deploy?
- Do you run agentic workflows inside your own business?
Retrieval and knowledge access
18 questionsGetting an agent to the right document without getting it to the wrong one, and keeping permissions intact on the way.
Answered on Retrieval, RAG and permission-aware knowledge access.
- What is retrieval-augmented generation?
- Do we need a vector database?
- How do we stop RAG answering from documents a user is not allowed to see?
- How do you measure whether retrieval is working?
- Why does our RAG assistant give confident wrong answers?
- Does a bigger context window remove the need for retrieval?
- What does a retrieval system cost to run?
- How should documents be chunked for a RAG system?
- Is prompt injection a risk if all our documents are internal?
- How do you keep a RAG index up to date when documents change?
- Should we buy an enterprise knowledge platform before trying RAG?
- Who needs to own the content before an AI assistant can answer from it?
- How many questions do you need in a retrieval evaluation set?
- Can you test a retrieval system properly before it goes live?
- How do we know an AI answer came from our own documents?
- What can a retrieval proof of concept prove in two to four weeks?
- Should an AI assistant search all our systems, or start with one?
- Where do the index and embeddings sit if we need UK data residency?
Retrieval, fine-tuning or prompting
18 questionsWhich of the three a problem actually needs, what each costs to run, and the cases where the cheapest option is the right one.
Answered on RAG, fine-tuning or prompting: how to choose.
- Do we need to fine-tune or use RAG?
- When is fine-tuning actually the right answer?
- Is prompting on its own enough?
- Do million-token context windows make RAG obsolete?
- What does fine-tuning commit us to after the first run?
- How do we choose without running a three-way bake-off?
- Can we combine them?
- Do we need to fine-tune to get consistent JSON output?
- Is RAG cheaper than fine-tuning?
- What should we ask a model provider before fine-tuning?
- Can a readiness audit settle whether we need RAG or fine-tuning?
- We fine-tuned a model and it still gets facts wrong. Why?
- A supplier wants to fine-tune on our documents. Is that a red flag?
- How do we run a prompting baseline, and how long does it take?
- Who should be in the room for a RAG versus fine-tuning decision?
- Does being in a regulated industry change the RAG or fine-tuning answer?
- If we change model provider later, does any of this work carry over?
- How long does a RAG or fine-tuning decision stay valid?
Tools and system integration
18 questionsWhat an agent is allowed to call, and how it is wired to the systems it acts on.
Answered on MCP, tool calling and integrating agents with your systems.
- What is the Model Context Protocol?
- Do we need MCP, or is plain function calling enough?
- What is the biggest security risk when an agent can call our systems?
- How do you stop an agent taking an action it cannot undo?
- How many tools should one agent have?
- How do you know what an agent actually did?
- What does a tool-calling agent cost per run, and how slow is it?
- How do you connect an agent to Salesforce, ServiceNow, SharePoint, Snowflake, Databricks or Workday?
- What is the difference between delegated and application permissions when an agent reads SharePoint?
- Do we need multi-agent AI, or is one agent enough?
- Should we use LangChain, LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen or Semantic Kernel?
- Where do we start when connecting an agent to our systems?
- Why does every agent action show up as the same Salesforce user?
- Is MCP a replacement for our integration platform?
- What should we ask a vendor selling us an MCP server?
- Can an agent just use the APIs we already have?
- What happens if someone renames a tool the agent uses?
- Why can our agent read more in Snowflake than we granted it?
Agent identity and access
18 questionsWho an agent is when it acts, what it is entitled to reach, and how that is evidenced afterwards.
Answered on Agent identity and access.
- Should AI agents have their own identities?
- How do you stop AI retrieval leaking documents to the wrong users?
- What breaks when you go from one agent to thirty?
- What is non-human identity governance?
- How do you run an AI pilot without exposing customer data?
- When should the security team get involved in an agentic project?
- What is the first thing a CISO should ask about an agent deployment?
- What does least privilege look like for an AI agent?
- Does agent identity work the same across cloud providers?
- Can our existing IAM programme handle AI agents?
- What is the difference between a service account and an agent identity?
- What is excessive agency in the OWASP LLM Top 10?
- What is security trimming, and does it work for AI retrieval?
- Our agents already run on a shared account. How do we fix it?
- Who needs to be involved in designing agent access?
- Won't a separate identity for every agent create identity sprawl?
- How much does it cost to get agent identity and access right?
- Where does the 109 machine identities per human figure come from?
Guardrails and accuracy
18 questionsHallucination control, guardrails and the accuracy an agent has to hold before anyone lets it near a customer.
Answered on Guardrails, hallucination and accuracy control.
- How do you stop an AI agent hallucinating?
- What are AI guardrails?
- Is a system prompt a guardrail?
- What is prompt injection, and how do you defend against it?
- What accuracy should we ask a supplier to commit to?
- Can you use one language model to check another?
- What actually breaks after week two?
- Will a newer model fix our accuracy problem?
- Should an AI system be allowed to say it does not know?
- What is AI red teaming, and how often should you do it?
- Should we buy a guardrails product or build our own controls?
- What should an AI accuracy policy actually contain?
- Can you trust a model's own confidence score?
- Can you add guardrails to an AI system that is already live?
- What can we show a risk committee to prove our AI guardrails work?
- Can you pick a model on its hallucination benchmark score?
- Do we need a human in the loop for every AI output?
- What does the first month of building AI guardrails look like?
Agent evaluation and assurance
18 questionsHow an agent is evaluated before it goes live and monitored once it is, and what that evidence has to look like.
Answered on Agent evaluation and assurance.
- Why do AI pilots never reach production?
- What do we do when a pilot succeeded and then went nowhere?
- What is trajectory evaluation for AI agents?
- Should a consultancy be willing to recommend against its own release?
- What do you measure when there is no ground truth?
- Who should own AI agent evaluation?
- What should we measure after an agent is live?
- What does an evaluation harness for an agent actually consist of?
- How do you build a ground-truth dataset for evaluating AI agents?
- What is the difference between monitoring and evaluating an AI agent?
- How do we get started with agent evaluation and assurance?
- What happens if the agent fails its evaluation thresholds?
- Do we need all this for a low-risk internal AI tool?
- Can one set of evaluation evidence answer more than one regulator?
- Does building an evaluation set slow the project down?
- Do we need to re-run evaluation when the model version changes?
- What happens to the evaluation harness when the build team leaves?
- Can a non-technical risk team sign off an AI agent?
The business case
18 questionsWhat an agentic programme is worth in currency, how the number is built, and which parts of it a finance function will refuse.
Answered on The business case for an agentic programme: ROI, payback and what to measure.
- What is the ROI of an agentic AI programme?
- How do you build a business case for AI agents?
- What is the payback period on an agentic proof of concept?
- Which running costs belong in an agentic business case?
- Should we count hours saved as savings?
- How do you stop the business case being over-optimistic?
- What should finance measure after go-live?
- Who should own benefits realisation?
- Should we fund an AI programme in stages or as one multi-year commitment?
- What does the cost side of an agentic business case look like?
- What should we ask a supplier who quotes an AI ROI figure?
- Can you stress-test a business case we have already written?
- Does the Green Book five case model apply to an AI business case?
- How long does it take to put an AI business case together?
- Can our finance team rework the numbers in an AI business case?
- Does deciding not to build something count as a return?
- How do we choose which process to build the first business case around?
- Should the firm building the system also write the business case?
Governance and regulatory evidence
18 questionsThe evidence a governance function, an auditor or a regulator will ask for, specified while you build rather than reconstructed afterwards.
Answered on AI governance and regulatory evidence.
- When do the EU AI Act's high-risk obligations actually apply?
- The board wants an AI plan. What should actually be in it?
- Where do AI governance programmes usually go wrong?
- How do you make agent decisions auditable?
- Who is accountable when an AI agent makes a mistake?
- What should an AI inventory include, and why does it take so long?
- Should risk and compliance review AI systems or help design them?
- The EU AI Act deadline moved. Should we pause our AI governance work?
- How often should AI governance be reviewed?
- What evidence should an AI governance programme produce?
- Is there an FCA AI governance framework we should be following?
- Do we need a separate AI framework, or can we extend model risk governance?
- Will an AI governance platform give us the evidence a regulator wants?
- What does it cost to get AI governance in place?
- How do you decide which AI systems count as high risk?
- Does ISO 42001 certification cover us for the EU AI Act?
- Will AI governance slow our delivery down?
- Do we need a law firm or a delivery partner for AI governance?
If your question is not in any of these, it is a good one for the call.
Talk it through07 of 07 · 416 questions
How we deliver
The operating model our engagements install, the engineering method underneath it, and the practices that run a quarter.
Target operating model design
18 questionsWhat a target operating model is, what it has to specify, how long one takes to design, who owns it afterwards, and whether you need one before starting on AI at all. The generic discipline, before the question becomes an AI question.
Answered on Target operating model.
- What is a target operating model?
- What is the difference between an operating model and a target operating model?
- What should a target operating model include?
- Is there a target operating model template?
- How long does it take to design a target operating model?
- What changes in a target operating model when AI agents do some of the work?
- Who owns the target operating model?
- Do you need a target operating model before starting on AI?
- What happens when a target operating model skips a component?
- How do you design a target operating model?
- Should an operating model name job titles or accountabilities?
- Who from our side needs to be involved in an operating model design?
- Can we run an operating model design in-house?
- Which part of the business should we pilot the new model in?
- How do you stop governance meetings turning into status updates?
- What are decision rights in an operating model?
- What do you get at the end of a target operating model design?
- Who should design our AI target operating model?
The Tenhaw Way
18 questionsThe operating model our engagements install, published in full so a team can adopt it without hiring us.
Answered on The Tenhaw Way.
- What is The Tenhaw Way?
- How is The Tenhaw Way different from Scrum or SAFe?
- Why price outcomes in currency?
- What are the levels of work in The Tenhaw Way?
- Why is a roadmap exactly one quarter?
- What is the difference between an AI-augmented and an AI-native team?
- How should my teams be structured to use The Tenhaw Way?
- Do I need to hire Tenhaw to use The Tenhaw Way?
- Where does AI fit in The Tenhaw Way?
- Does adopting The Tenhaw Way mean more meetings?
- What should we ask a UK AI delivery partner about their operating model?
- Is this just OKRs with a currency figure attached?
- Won't the approval gates just slow delivery down?
- Do we need new roles to run this, or do our existing ones cover it?
- We cannot adopt all of this at once. What matters most?
- Can different teams run different delivery modes at the same time?
- How do you stop another team's dependency derailing the quarter?
- What stages does an outcome move through, from idea to closed?
The AI-native target operating model
18 questionsWhat changes in structure, roles and decision rights once agents do a share of the work, and how the design engagement runs.
Answered on Target operating model for an AI-native organisation.
- What is a target operating model for an AI-native organisation?
- How is this different from a Big Four target operating model?
- Do we restructure before deploying agents, or after?
- What actually changes for a team in an AI-native operating model?
- Who is accountable when an agent gets something wrong?
- What about the people side: roles, spans and layers, workforce transition?
- How long does target operating model design take, and what does it cost?
- Why do target operating models fail to get implemented?
- Will AI fix a weak operating model?
- How do you move a team from AI-augmented to AI-native?
- Does an AI target operating model replace the one we already have?
- Is redesigning the operating model just another reorg?
- Which functions have to be in the room for an AI-native operating model?
- How do you know if the problem is your operating model or the technology?
- Isn't it too early to redesign the organisation while AI changes so fast?
- Does going AI-native mean fewer approval gates and lighter process?
- How do you tell whether a new operating model has actually been adopted?
- Does an operating model redesign cover the whole business or just delivery?
Building with AI
22 questionsThe engineering method underneath the operating model: how we use AI to build, and what we hold to when we do.
Answered on Building with AI.
- Does the method work on an existing system, or only greenfield?
- What does AI-engineering-first mean?
- How long does it take to build a product this way?
- Why convert requirements to markdown first?
- What is the single highest-value step?
- How do you stop AI-generated code accumulating security problems?
- How do you stop this creating a dependency on the person who built it?
- Does this replace engineers?
- How do you keep AI-generated code maintainable?
- What happens when requirements change partway through the build?
- What does a Claude Code enterprise implementation actually involve?
- Why build a knowledge map across the requirements?
- Do we need to tidy our documentation before you start?
- Do you prompt the model file by file, or all at once?
- How do you get diagrams and screenshots into the requirement set?
- What if the business cannot answer the gaps the model finds?
- Why start from a blank repo instead of our standard project template?
- How do you verify the model actually met every requirement?
- We already run Claude and Claude Code. Does this method work with them?
- Our stack is OpenAI. Can you build this with Codex and Azure OpenAI?
- We are a Google shop. Does this work with Gemini and Vertex AI?
- Can you run this on an open-weight model we host ourselves?
The AI-native delivery lifecycle
19 questionsWhat changes in the way software is specified, reviewed and shipped once agents are doing part of the work.
Answered on AI-native SDLC and product delivery lifecycle.
- What is an AI-native SDLC?
- Why does AI coding tool adoption stall?
- Does AI-assisted development make code less maintainable?
- How do you handle engineers who resist AI-assisted development?
- If AI writes most of the code, how do you know it is safe?
- How do you turn a proof of concept into production software?
- How do you measure whether an AI-native SDLC is working?
- Why does code review become the bottleneck in AI-assisted development?
- What replaces user stories in an AI-native SDLC?
- What does it cost to move an engineering team to AI-native delivery?
- Where do we start with an AI-native SDLC?
- Do AI coding tools actually make a team ship faster?
- Do requirements need rewriting before a model can build from them?
- How do you write an engineering standard an agent can enforce?
- Does it matter which AI coding tool we standardise on?
- What do developers actually do when the model writes the code?
- How long before our own engineers can run this without help?
- How long does moving to AI-native delivery actually take?
- What has to change in our SDLC for a Claude Code enterprise implementation to stick?
The how-to library
15 questionsWhat the how-to guides are, who they are written for, and how to use them without hiring anyone.
Answered on All how-to guides.
- Do I need to sign up or pay to read the how-to guides?
- Who are the delivery how-to guides written for?
- What do the seventeen how-to guides cover?
- What is the difference between The Tenhaw Way and the how-to guides?
- Why does an AI consultancy publish guides on roadmaps and tickets?
- Do we have to adopt the whole operating model to use one guide?
- Can we adapt the guides to the terms our organisation already uses?
- Which how-to guides should executives read?
- Do the how-to guides change for an AI-native team?
- If the guides are free, what does a Tenhaw engagement add?
- Do the guides show a full worked example or just the steps?
- How long does one of these guides take to run?
- Do these guides cover how the code actually gets built with AI?
- Do we need finance and engineering involved to run these guides?
- Can we use these guides if our leadership will not price work in money?
Outcomes and roadmaps
36 questionsSetting an outcome worth having, and planning a quarter against it rather than against a list of features.
Answered on How to define and price a business outcome and How to build a quarterly product roadmap.
- How do you define a business outcome that can actually be priced?
- How do you baseline a process before setting an improvement target?
- Who should own a business outcome, and what does owning it mean?
- How do you validate that a business outcome actually landed?
- How do you set the horizon for an outcome without over-committing?
- How do you break a priced outcome into epics without losing the number?
- What happens at an approval gate for a priced outcome?
- How do you price an outcome when the benefit is avoided cost rather than revenue?
- What is the difference between an outcome, an epic and a story?
- How do you stop a roadmap filling with work that has no business case?
- How do you price work with no revenue line, like compliance, security or platform?
- How precise does the price need to be?
- Can one epic contribute to two outcomes?
- What happens when the value does not land?
- How long does it take to define and price a business outcome?
- We inherited a roadmap nobody can trace to a number. What do we do first?
- Two epics improve the same conversion rate. How do we price them?
- Can we use an industry benchmark to price an outcome?
- What if an outcome needs longer than a quarter?
- How do I set a calibration factor before I have any history?
- Something urgent lands in week five. What do I do with it?
- Do the Tech Debt and Bug Budget epics carry a currency value?
- How do you calculate team capacity for a quarterly plan?
- How much capacity should go to tech debt and bug fixing each quarter?
- How many outcomes should one team take on in a quarter?
- Should I forecast each epic separately or the roadmap as a whole?
- The plan does not fit the quarter. Do we trim scope everywhere or drop an epic?
- What should a published quarterly roadmap show the business?
- When should we start planning next quarter, and how long does it take?
- Who needs to be involved in quarterly roadmap planning?
- What does a quarterly roadmap look like with the numbers filled in?
- What should happen when the quarter closes?
- How much of the quarter should be ready to start on day one?
- How do we tell by week six whether the quarter is off track?
- Can we give the business a twelve-month roadmap?
- Does quarterly planning work differently on an AI-native team?
Measuring value
18 questionsValidating that the outcome actually landed, in the currency the business uses rather than in story points.
Answered on How to measure the value a project delivered.
- How long should an epic sit in value monitoring?
- What if we cannot attribute the value cleanly?
- Does every epic need this, including tech debt and bugs?
- How do we stop this becoming a blame exercise?
- What is the difference between monitoring a release and measuring its value?
- How big does a holdout group need to be to prove a conversion lift?
- Our reporting system only keeps ninety days of history. Can we still baseline?
- How do you stop two projects claiming the same benefit?
- Are usage numbers proof that a feature delivered value?
- Should delivered benefits be measured in revenue or margin?
- What if it is too early to tell whether the value has landed?
- Do we need someone from finance in the monthly value review?
- Is a monthly value review worth the overhead on a small team?
- Why not just do a post-implementation review at the end?
- What do you do when a launch lift fades after a few months?
- How should unmeasured epics be counted in an outcome's forecast?
- Can we change the metric mid-build if we learn something?
- Which parts of the monthly value review can agents take over?
Epics and stories
54 questionsHow the work is described before anyone builds it, from a value-focused epic down to a story a team can finish.
Answered on How to write an epic that carries a value target, How to break an epic into stories and How to write a user story.
- What if the epic has no revenue attached, like a compliance deadline or a platform migration?
- How precise does the value estimate need to be?
- Who writes the value, product or finance?
- Can two epics share one outcome's value if they only work together?
- What makes a good epic title?
- How do you put a financial value on an epic?
- What if the epics under an outcome don't add up to its target?
- What if the metric an epic needs doesn't exist yet?
- What if an epic is too big to fit in one quarter?
- What extra detail does an epic need when AI writes the code?
- How long does it take to write an epic that carries a value target?
- Do we need a new ticket type for a value-focused epic?
- How do we fix an existing epic nobody can put a number against?
- What does engineering check before approving an epic?
- Why record objections in the ticket after the decision is made?
- How can you tell an epic's value was made up?
- Should an epic's value be annualised or just the quarter?
- What does an outcome split into priced epics actually look like?
- How many stories should an epic have?
- Do stories carry a currency value?
- What do I do with a story nobody can size?
- Can I write stories before the epic is approved?
- What is a vertical slice, and why not split stories by layer?
- How do you know when a user story is too big?
- Can AI write the story breakdown for us?
- Which story should the team build first?
- What makes good acceptance criteria for a user story?
- Do AI-native teams still need user stories?
- How long does it take to break an epic into stories?
- What should we check before splitting an epic into stories?
- Do we need a user journey map before slicing an epic?
- Who needs to be in the room to approve a story breakdown?
- What does a real epic-to-story breakdown look like?
- What does it cost when a story slips out of the quarter?
- How do we make sure the stories cover the whole epic?
- Where do bugs and refactoring found during the split go?
- Who writes the story, the product manager or the engineer?
- How small is too small?
- The epic is not product-approved yet. Can I write stories against it?
- Do we still need the As a user, I want, so that template?
- What does it mean to slice a user story vertically?
- How many acceptance criteria should a user story have?
- Should every user story have a metric?
- How do you handle assumptions and open questions in a user story?
- How much detail does a user story need?
- Should an AI-native team split an epic into stories?
- How long does it take to write a user story?
- What should you leave out of a user story?
- How should a user story be titled?
- What does product check before approving a story?
- Where do non-functional requirements go in a user story?
- Can a story sit under more than one epic?
- What does AI get wrong when it drafts a user story?
- What does a well-written user story look like?
Discovery and chapters
36 questionsFinding out what is true before committing a quarter to it, and holding a body of work together while it is in flight.
Answered on How to run product discovery research and How to write a chapter (a sub-task of a story).
- How long should discovery take?
- Does every epic need discovery?
- Who should run discovery?
- Can AI do the discovery for us?
- What is a kill condition in product discovery?
- What happens if discovery shows the epic is worth less than planned?
- Where should discovery evidence be kept?
- Can you run discovery with interviews alone?
- What is a realisation factor and how do you set one?
- Should discovery end in a report?
- Continuous discovery vs a two-week timebox: which is better?
- Is a fake door test enough evidence to price a feature?
- What are the steps in a two-week discovery sprint?
- We only have an idea, not an epic yet. Is that discovery?
- Does discovery change if AI is writing the code?
- Why capture the baseline during discovery rather than at launch?
- How do you work out how many customers a feature would reach?
- What do you do when the research says nothing either way?
- Can a chapter have chapters of its own?
- Do chapters get story points?
- Does product need to approve chapters?
- What if a chapter turns out to be user-visible after all?
- What is a chapter in The Tenhaw Way?
- How do you split a story that turns out to be bigger than estimated?
- What is the difference between a sub-task and a story?
- Should sub-tasks be created during planning or during development?
- Should developers work on sub-tasks in parallel or in sequence?
- Should a refactor found mid-build be a sub-task of the story?
- Is it OK to split a ticket into backend and frontend sub-tasks?
- What should a sub-task ticket actually contain?
- Is splitting a story mid-sprint just extra admin?
- Is a story finished once all its sub-tasks are closed?
- How often is it normal for a story to split mid-build?
- Why can't a sub-task carry its own value target?
- How do we introduce sub-tasks to a team that doesn't use them?
- Should you split a ticket before handing it to an AI coding agent?
Forecasting and dates
36 questionsProbability rather than a promise: forecasting with confidence intervals, and what holding a date actually takes.
Answered on How to forecast delivery with confidence intervals and How to deliver a project on time.
- How much history do I need before I can forecast?
- The team is brand new and has no throughput at all. What then?
- The business will not accept a range. What do I give them?
- Do I need a forecasting tool to do this?
- What is the difference between a p50 and a p85 forecast?
- Should we forecast delivery in story points or counted items?
- How do you account for scope growth in a delivery forecast?
- How do you run a Monte Carlo delivery forecast in a spreadsheet?
- Should I exclude holiday weeks and outliers from throughput data?
- What do you do when the forecast says the quarter will not fit?
- Is it worth re-running the forecast every week?
- How do we know if our delivery forecasts are actually any good?
- Does throughput forecasting still work when the model writes most of the code?
- How much effort is it to set up delivery forecasting from scratch?
- Why not just average our weekly throughput to get a date?
- What should a delivery forecast include besides the two numbers?
- Do bug fixes and tech debt count towards throughput?
- Does counting items work if our stories are wildly different sizes?
- We have no clean history to forecast from. Where do we start?
- The business will not accept a range. They want one date.
- The date is fixed externally, by a regulator or a contract. What changes?
- How large a forecast movement is worth escalating?
- Why do delivery slips only show up in the last few weeks?
- Can we get a late project back on time by pushing the team harder?
- What are our options when an epic is going to miss its date?
- Should we forecast delivery from team capacity or from throughput?
- Is it OK to move a committed date when the forecast slips?
- Can we count work as done when the AI says it is finished?
- Who should own a delivery date, the delivery lead or the sponsor?
- How many epics should one team have in flight at once?
- What does on time actually mean for a delivery team?
- Why does the quarter still miss after we rescue the escalated epic?
- We plan more value than we deliver every quarter. What should we do?
- Someone assumed their project was committed. How do we handle it?
- What does catching a slip in week four actually look like?
- Is a rising bug count an early warning that a date will slip?
Running delivery day to day
54 questionsThe week-to-week practice: managing product delivery, watching a release in production, and keeping the team well enough to do it again next quarter.
Answered on How to monitor the first week after a release, How to run product delivery day to day and How to run a team health check.
- How long should the window be?
- Is this the same as being on call?
- What if the change is behind a flag or a percentage rollout?
- Who owns it, product or engineering?
- Why does a release work in staging but break in production?
- How often should you check on a release after it goes live?
- What should you baseline before a release goes out?
- When should you roll back a release instead of fixing forward?
- How do you prepare customer support for a release?
- Can an AI agent run post-release monitoring?
- We had no alerts after the release. Is that a good sign?
- What do you do with the problems you find in the first week?
- How much extra work does watching a release actually add?
- What does a release watch look like when something goes wrong?
- We ship without any of this today. What is the first thing to add?
- Do we need new monitoring tools to watch a release?
- What has to be true before you can call a release done?
- Who covers the release watch at the weekend or on holiday?
- How long should this take each day?
- What if I cover three teams?
- An urgent customer request just came in. Does it beat the sequence?
- How is this different from stand-up?
- How do I stop spending my whole day answering status questions?
- How do I spot stalled work on a delivery board?
- How fast should a product manager answer questions that block a build?
- How often should a team's priority order actually change?
- What should happen to an epic's value when it loses scope mid-quarter?
- A developer is free. Should I rush the next epic through approval?
- Isn't checking the board every morning just micromanagement?
- What do you actually need to run delivery day to day?
- What should I do first when a team is over its work in progress limit?
- Two pieces of work look equally important. Which one goes first?
- How do we stop delivery decisions getting lost in chat?
- Does every new item really need to sit under an epic?
- Why does one stuck ticket hurt more when the model writes the code?
- What should a delivery lead check at the end of each day?
- How is this different from a retrospective?
- Should the scores be anonymous?
- What if every card comes back green?
- Who runs it and who attends?
- What questions should a team health check include?
- How often should you run a team health check?
- How should a team health check be scored?
- What data should we bring to a team health check?
- When should leadership act on a bad health check score?
- Should team health check results be shared with managers?
- How do you keep a team health check to 45 minutes?
- Half the team scored green and half red. What does that mean?
- Why leave a health check with only two actions?
- Should new joiners score in a team health check?
- Can we roll team health scores up into one number for the board?
- What do you do when the team cannot say what its work is worth?
- Which health check cards change for an AI-native team?
- How do health check scores feed into quarterly planning?
Bugs and root cause
36 questionsWhat happens when something is wrong: raising a bug somebody can act on, and finding the cause rather than the symptom.
Answered on How to write a bug report and How to run a root cause analysis.
- Is a missed requirement a bug?
- Do defects found before release count against the bug budget?
- Who sets severity, and can it be changed?
- What do we do when the bug budget runs out mid-quarter?
- What makes a good bug report?
- How do you decide between rolling back and fixing forward?
- What should we do with a bug nobody can reproduce?
- How do you put a cost on a bug?
- Should you fix every bug?
- How do you stop the same bug coming back?
- How long should it take to raise and triage a bug?
- How many times should you reproduce a bug before raising it?
- When is a defect tech debt rather than a bug?
- How do you track which release introduced a bug?
- Who has to sign off before a bug can be closed?
- How do you stop teams relabelling bugs to protect the numbers?
- What do you check a bug against when there are no acceptance criteria?
- Do bug tickets need refining and sizing like user stories?
- How is an RCA different from live monitoring?
- Who should run the session?
- What if the cause sits with a supplier we do not control?
- Is this supposed to be blameless?
- Which incidents actually need a root cause analysis?
- How soon after an incident should you run a root cause analysis?
- What is the difference between a trigger and a root cause?
- How do you decide if something is a real cause or just context?
- How many whys should a five whys analysis actually take?
- How do you stop RCA actions being forgotten?
- Is a root cause analysis the same as a post-mortem?
- How do we introduce root cause analysis to a team that has never done one?
- How do you build an incident timeline everyone agrees on?
- Do we still need an alert once the bug itself is fixed?
- What should a root cause analysis report include?
- What changes in a root cause analysis when AI wrote the code?
- How should past incidents shape the next quarter's plan?
- Is a formal root cause analysis overkill for a small team?
Risks and release notes
36 questionsWriting a risk somebody will act on, and a release note somebody will read.
Answered on How to write a risk or issue in a RAID log and How to write release notes.
- When a risk becomes an issue, do I raise a new item?
- How do I set a probability when I have no data?
- Our board wants a RAG status. Do we abandon that?
- How big should a RAID log be?
- What is the difference between a risk and an issue?
- How do you write a good risk statement?
- How do you put a monetary value on a project risk?
- Who should own a risk, and can it be the person who raised it?
- How often should a RAID log be reviewed?
- Is it ever right to just accept a risk?
- What should you do first when an issue is already costing money?
- How do you close a risk in a RAID log?
- Do assumptions and dependencies belong in the same log as risks?
- Should we log the same risk against every epic it affects?
- How do you set a deadline for a decision on a risk?
- Why does our risk log get updated but nothing ever changes?
- How long should it take to write up a risk properly?
- What should a risk log cover when a model writes the code?
- Who writes the release notes, product or engineering?
- What if the change is invisible to customers?
- Can we auto-generate the notes from commit messages?
- Is this proportionate for a hotfix at 2am?
- Should release notes be written before or after the release goes out?
- What should customer-facing release notes say?
- What does the support team need before a new feature is released?
- What goes in the developer changelog for a release?
- Should we report a shipped feature as delivered value?
- What is a ship kit in The Tenhaw Way?
- What do release notes say when only some customers get the feature?
- Our release notes are a changelog dump. What do we fix first?
- What should you gather before writing release notes?
- How do you decide when to widen a release to more customers?
- Why keep some customers on the old version during a rollout?
- What if our rollback procedure has never been run for real?
- How do release notes change when a model wrote the code?
- Are release notes finished once they have been published?
If your question is not in any of these, it is a good one for the call.
Talk it throughNot answered here?
The questions above are the ones we have been asked enough times to write down. Anything specific to your estate, your regulator or your timeline is a conversation rather than a paragraph, and that is what the 30 minutes below is for. You can also read the case studies, each of which states its evidence basis on the page, or the five priced engagements.
Thirty minutes answers the ones a page cannot.
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