Keep, adjust or stop: reviewing an AI use case
For anyone who inherits or reviews AI use cases that are already running and that nobody has evaluated calmly.
When to use it
- You arrived in an area with three or four "AI pilots" and nobody knows which one is still alive.
- License renewal is coming and someone has to decide what stays.
- You were asked to reorganize with AI and want to map duplicated work before touching anyone.
The sheet
One row per use case. If it does not fit in one row, it is still an idea.
| Use case | Monthly cost | Metric it moved | Evidence | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [What it does, for whom, since when] | [Licenses + hours of human review] | [One number, before and after] | [Where the data lives] | Keep / Adjust / Stop |
| Illustrative: draft replies to complaints, customer service, since March | Licenses for 6 people + 5 h/week of review | First-response time: from 2 days to 1 | Ticket system report, April to September | Keep |
| Illustrative: automatic summaries of sales meetings | Included in the suite + 0 h of review | Nothing measured | Nobody reads them, per internal survey | Stop |
The duplicated-work question (answered with the team):
- What office work is repeated in my area? [Two people or two systems produce the same thing: ____________]
- Where, in the operation, is it worth investing more? [A process that touches the client and waits today: ____________]
Reviewed by: ____________ · Date: ________ · Next review: ________
How to fill it in 10 minutes
- List today's use cases, by name and start date. If nobody knows the date, that is already a signal.
- Write the full cost: licenses plus hours of human review. The second part is almost never counted.
- Ask for one metric per row, with the before and the after. "It saves us time" is not a metric.
- Point to where the evidence is. If it is the opinion of whoever proposed it, write "opinion" and treat it as Adjust, not Keep.
- Give the verdict. Adjust means changing scope, data or who reviews, with a date to measure again.
- The most common mistake: reviewing the use cases without asking the duplicated-work question. The sheet tells you what to stop; the question tells you where to reinvest.
The line that is almost always missing
The evidence column. When a case has been running for months, everyone assumes it works because nobody turned it off. A Keep with no data behind it is inertia. And if the review touches people, neither the sheet nor the AI makes that decision: a leader does, with data and taking responsibility.
What the news says
Fact: according to Reuters, cited by Fox Business on 13 October 2026, Kroger, one of the largest supermarket chains in the United States, plans to eliminate about 3,000 corporate positions over three years and is bringing AI tools and training to more than 400,000 operations employees. The company talks about costs and duplicated work, not only AI.
My reading: the easy reading is "AI takes jobs". The useful one is that the company cuts where it believes work is repeated and invests where the customer is. If you are going to reorganize with AI, first map that repeated work with your team. Otherwise you cut blind.
Vic Sol · Decision Desk · vicsol.org/resources/ · Free to use with attribution. This sheet structures a conversation; it is not legal, financial or audit advice.