Design the Handoff Before the Automation
A workflow is not complete when Claude finishes. It is complete when the next person can verify, decide, act, and recover. Map a current workflow before choosing where Claude should participate. Decide whether to assist, automate, redesign, or reject a workflow step. Specify step inputs, outputs, owners, gates, fallback, and service expectations. Build human handoff packets that preserve evidence, uncertainty, and authority. Measure workflow value without ignoring review, failure, and maintenance cost. A product team automates its weekly release briefing. Claude reads issue summaries, drafts the brief, and posts it to a shared channel every Friday. The first two briefs save time. The third includes a feature that was removed from scope. The fourth omits an unresolved security concern. The engineer who used to assemble the brief assumes the product manager now owns review. The product manager assumes the automated post was already approved. The team automated text production but deleted the ownership model. There is no source cutoff, approval gate, escalation path, or fallback when data is incomplete. A successful workflow is not a chain of model calls. It is a chain of responsibilities with explicit evidence and recoverable state. Before adding Claude, observe how the work really moves: What event starts it? Who supplies each input? Which systems are sources of record? Where do people use judgment? Which…
Design the Handoff Before the Automation: A workflow is not complete when Claude finishes. It is complete when the next person can verify, decide, act, and…
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