Decide | Alan Lindsay Consulting

Discovery

Find out what is true before committing budget to building it.

The most expensive product mistakes are made before anyone writes code. A discovery engagement puts the missing research, customer conversations, and system diagnosis in front of the people making the call.

You get a written account of what is actually going on, the options it leaves open, and a recommendation you can act on or set aside.

Engagements are scoped as statements of work.

He took in a lot of information from me, the subject-matter expert, and mapped it into truly impactful product improvements.

Erik GrowRisk management specialist · Via The 41st Parameter and Experian

On the menu

Ask about discovery

Stakeholder interviewsForm a complete picture from diverse perspectives across the org.
Customer conversationsHear what buyers and users actually need before committing to a direction.
Contextual inquiryUnderstand how the work really gets done, workarounds and all.
Market researchKnow where the opportunity stands against the alternatives buyers already have, AI tools included.
System diagnosisMake sense of the systems and data the business already depends on.
Product scopingDraw a clear boundary around what matters most, and what can wait.
Findings and recommendationLeave with a clear account of what is true and where to go next.

You might need this if…

A launch date is set and no one has tested the idea with a customer.
Leadership disagrees about the problem, not just the solution.
A system runs the business and no one fully understands it.

Selected examples

Circadence. Ran the market research a launch plan was missing. It showed the offering was a feature slice, not a full platform, and leadership halted the launch before it reached the market.
OneShare Health. Stepped into a legacy vendor platform no one fully understood, mapped the stakeholder and data-ownership gaps, and turned that diagnosis into a migration plan that secured the company’s data.
Experian. Ran the discovery behind a design system built for global reach: interviews and working sessions with brand, engineering, and product teams across regions to account for cultural uses of the brand, differing technology requirements, product-specific UI flows, and accessibility needs.
The 41st Parameter. Sat with the risk analysts who reviewed the transactions the platform flagged for human review, learned what they actually needed, and worked with them on rules to find the changes with the highest value for the outcome.
Patterson Homes. Worked with CEO James Patterson to understand a largely paper-based construction business, and used that understanding to shape the document processing pipeline that followed.

Where AI fits

Decide where AI belongs in your work and your product, and where it does not.

Most companies are adding AI to the way they already work: the same process, the same product, with a model bolted on. The bigger wins come from rethinking the work itself, and from knowing what not to build. The major AI platforms improve every month, so building what they already offer is a race you do not need to run.

I help you find where AI pays off, inside the business and in what you sell: what to connect to tools that already exist, what knowledge and data are truly yours, what has to change in your process or data before AI can use it, and how much of the work AI should carry on its own. You leave with a written recommendation, including where not to use AI. A build is its own statement of work.

Engagements are scoped as statements of work.

On the menu

Ask about where AI fits

Rethink the workflowFind the work AI changes, not just speeds up, and redesign the process around it.
Connect before buildingUse the AI tools and platforms that already exist before building your own.
Control and autonomyDecide which steps run on fixed rules, which a model handles on its own, and how the two hand off.
What is truly yoursName the knowledge, data, and judgment a general-purpose tool cannot supply. That is where to build.
Capture what your people knowTurn expertise that lives in people’s heads into written process, examples, and instructions AI can work from.
Data readinessGet the data into a shape AI can use, including what has to be restructured first.
AI in the productDecide how AI shows up for your customers: in your screens, through their own assistants, or behind the scenes.
Findings and recommendationLeave with where AI fits, where it does not, and what to do first.

You might need this if…

Leadership wants an AI plan, and no one has named the problem it should solve.
AI was added to the old workflow, and the workflow did not change.
The team is building AI tooling the major platforms already offer.

Selected examples

OneShare Health. Built an AI ticket writer that structures requests before triage, and an AI report generator for triage reports, cycle reports, and backlog themes. Both were written into the operating playbook, with a person adding judgment and narrative before anything went out.
Alan Lindsay Consulting. Designed and built the two systems this practice runs on. One captures direction and decisions from people and controls what context AI agents receive. The other runs AI work on fixed rails with checks at each step, so the output holds up.

Roadmapping

A roadmap leadership agrees to and engineering can plan against.

A useful roadmap is a sequence of bets tied to real capacity, reviewed often enough to stay honest. I run the alignment sessions, turn the result into themes sequenced onto delivery cycles, and set the review cadence.

The roadmap is yours after delivery. It is set up so your team keeps it current.

Engagements are scoped as statements of work.

A vision that is both inspiring and realistic.

Chris FoisyStaff Product Designer · Via Experian

On the menu

Ask about roadmapping

Alignment sessionsBuild consensus on priority, focus, and timing for critical delivery.
Capacity planningGround every commitment in what the team can realistically deliver.
Themes and sequencingShape initiatives into a clear story of what comes when.
Review cadenceKeep the roadmap honest as priorities and conditions change.
Rolling horizonCommit firmly to what is near and stay flexible about what is far.

You might need this if…

The roadmap changes every time a new executive request arrives.
Engineering cannot tell which items on it are real commitments.
Every leader has a different top priority, and all of them are urgent.

Selected examples

OneShare Health. Ran bi-monthly roadmap reviews on a rolling three-cycle horizon, fed by an AI thematic scan of the backlog and stakeholder alignment voting, which brought competing leadership priorities into one achievable plan.
Circadence. Owned the product roadmap and facilitated its creation with the executive team, deciding which products and features would ship and how they would be delivered.
Experian. Owned the design system roadmap, planning releases and component priorities with teams worldwide, and set an annual design-community roadmap through the global design conference, with takeaways reported back and carried forward each year.