Are Your Processes Making AI Agents Worse?

Joseph Ours leads the AI Strategy Practice at Centric Consulting.

The fastest way to waste an investment in AI agents is to make them work exactly like people.

Organizations are doing it anyway—dropping agents into human-designed processes, then mistaking the resulting friction for a limitation of the technology. They keep the same handoffs, review points, templates and interim work products, then wonder why the agent doesn’t deliver the speed or efficiency they expected.

The process is frequently what’s holding it back.

A recent Deloitte study found that among senior leaders at organizations already piloting agentic AI, 74% expect nearly half of their business processes to be redesigned or rebuilt around agents within four years. Yet, business processes were the least prepared area in the survey. Only 21% of leaders called their processes ready, and just 5% called them highly prepared.

That sounds like a process-readiness problem, but organizations often solve for the wrong kind of readiness. They document what’s already there and repackage it for an agent to consume, without asking whether any of it makes the agent more effective.

You’re Asking The Wrong First Question

Software delivery is a useful example because the process is full of artifacts created to move context between people. For decades, teams have used user stories, acceptance criteria, specifications and review documents to translate business stakeholders’ intent into requirements for analysts, developers, testers and approvers.

Now agents are entering that flow, where every artifact either helps the agent do the work, helps humans review the work, or adds friction.

Ask Whether The Artifact Helps The Agent Act

An agent can use an artifact that doesn’t help it. What matters is whether producing those artifacts improves the agent’s next action.