Back to retrospective ideas

AI Feature Decision

Evaluate an AI feature by user value, model capability, failure modes, and required guardrails.

Template Columns

User value

Model capability

Failure modes

Guardrails

Decision

The AI Feature Decision template helps product teams decide whether an AI capability is useful, reliable, and responsible enough to ship. It puts user value and model limitations in the same conversation.

Evaluate the whole product decision

Capture the user outcome first. Then assess what the model can do consistently, the failure modes users may face, and the guardrails required to detect, prevent, or recover from those failures. Record the decision with the assumptions that support it.

This avoids two common traps: shipping a technically impressive feature without a valuable job, or rejecting useful AI because the team has not designed the right review and recovery path.

How to facilitate

  1. 01
    Define value without mentioning AI. State the user problem and desired outcome.
  2. 02
    Test realistic edge cases. Average demos hide the failures users remember.
  3. 03
    Design recovery. Give users a way to inspect, correct, retry, or escalate output.
  4. 04
    Record the threshold. Define what must be true to ship, pilot, pause, or stop.

When to use this template

Use this board for copilots, generative features, recommendation systems, autonomous agents, AI summaries, or any feature where model behavior affects the customer experience.