Scoping AI features (confidence, speed, and failure modes)

AI features need a different scoping conversation

Most product features behave predictably. Click a button, see a result. Submit a form, get an outcome. The product either works or it has a bug.

AI features don’t behave like that. They produce different outputs at different times. They’re right most of the time and occasionally wrong. They’re fast, then sometimes slow. They fail in unfamiliar ways. The same input can produce different responses on different days.

That changes how you scope them. The questions you need to answer aren’t just “what does it do?” They include “how often does it work?”, “how fast does it respond?”, “how does it fail?”, and “how should the product behave when it does?”

Scoping AI features well means thinking carefully about confidence, speed, and failure modes — ...

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