# Five Decisions Worksheet

Define Problem, Product, People, Production, and Proof for one workflow.

Built Into Work | Vic Akosile | Version 1.0 | October 5, 2026

For: Domain leaders and delivery partners
Use when: When turning an idea into a shared brief
Suggested time: 25 minutes

Use synthetic or authorized information. Keep sensitive work in approved tools. A named person owns each decision. These tools support discussion and planning; they are not validated assessments.

## Make the five decisions

An editable companion to the SIOP worksheet. Use one workflow and keep the first result small.

### 1. Problem

What happens now, where does it break, who feels the cost, and what should improve?

Your response:

________________________________________________________________

### 2. Product

What must be produced, what is the smallest useful result, and what is excluded?

Your response:

________________________________________________________________

### 3. People

Who uses, contributes expertise, approves, builds, and owns it?

Your response:

________________________________________________________________

### 4. Production

What sources and access are required? How do reliability, errors, support, and maintenance work?

Your response:

________________________________________________________________

### 5. Proof

What evidence would make you continue, change, expand, or stop?

Your response:

________________________________________________________________

### Next useful step

Name one action, owner, review date, and delivery route.

Your response:

________________________________________________________________

## Completed companion example

All organizations, workflows, numbers, and results in these examples are fictional and provided for learning. Targets are proposed decision criteria, not validated standards or promised outcomes.

**1. Problem**
Analysts search inconsistent leave-policy documents and rework routine answers.

**2. Product**
A cited draft or escalation. Exclude eligibility decisions and automatic sending.

**3. People**
Analyst uses; specialist reviews; platform partner builds; service-desk lead owns.

**4. Production**
Approved synthetic corpus first; current policy versions; exception handling and manual fallback.

**5. Proof**
Compare total handling effort and quality; stop for unauthorized actions or missed eligibility escalation.

**Next useful step**
Borrow specialist support for a synthetic test; lead reviews in two weeks.

## Working record

Owner:
Review date:
Decision:
Evidence still needed:

Original guide: https://builtinto.work/resources/five-decisions