The five phases
Every phase delivers something, and only ends at the gate.
The design is always the same: understand where you are, decide how you will operate, build the minimum that works and prove it with real teams. What changes from company to company is the content, not the order. Not everything a phase produces is a document: Align produces four decisions and one document.
- 01AlignScan · 1 day
Exit gateThere is a measurable business outcome, a named sponsor, an agreed initial scope and the baseline of the indicators.
What comes outThe north star for AI development, the candidate teams and the success criteria. The baseline requires collecting company data, and that does not come out of one meeting.
- 02MapScan · 3 days
Exit gateEnd-to-end flow mapped and a list of opportunities prioritized by impact, effort and risk.
What comes outThe map of current development, the friction map and the prioritization matrix.
- 03DesignScan · 3 days
Exit gateTarget operating model approved, with clear responsibility between person, AI and system, and the pilot defined with a minimum volume of deliveries per week. If the team does not have that volume, the delivery stops at the Scan and the Go waits.
What comes outThe Person by AI responsibility matrix, the target architecture, the guardrails and the enablement plan.
- 04EnableGo · 2 days
Exit gateHarness working end to end in a controlled environment, with integrations, context, agents and the minimum controls to start the pilot.
What comes outThe minimum viable harness integrated with IDE, Git, CI/CD and task manager, the context layer, the usage policies and the developer manual.
- 05ProveGo · 5 days, over 3 to 4 weeks of pilot
Exit gateThe pilot shows proven benefit without degrading quality, security or compliance, with evidence to decide on scale. If it fails, the report and the metrics are delivered all the same, and the decision not to scale is recorded with the reason.
What comes outThe before-and-after metrics, the pilot report and the business case to scale.