# Manual-or-Assisted Follow-Up Review

- **Version:** 1.0
- **Updated:** July 24, 2026
- **License:** Personal use
- **Format:** Markdown worksheet

Use this worksheet before adding assistance to a follow-up workflow. Begin with the real work, evidence, people, and consequences—not a tool demonstration.

For each step, choose one boundary:

- **ASSIST** — repeatable preparation or routing may be assisted, with a named reviewer and a manual fallback.
- **HUMAN OWNS** — assistance may organize evidence, but a person makes and approves the consequential decision.
- **KEEP MANUAL** — the likely benefit does not justify the error, privacy, maintenance, or accountability risk.

Keeping a step manual is a valid outcome. Assistance is useful only when it reduces real effort without obscuring responsibility.

## 1. Name the workflow

**Workflow:**

**Person affected:**

**Person accountable:**

**Current start event:**

**Current finish state:**

**Reason for reviewing it now:**

Describe the current path in plain language. Include where evidence arrives, who reads it, what decision is made, what promise is communicated, and where the result is recorded.

Do not use “the system decides” when a person is accountable for the outcome.

## 2. Record the steps

Copy this block for each step:

### Step

- Step name:
- Current input:
- Evidence required:
- Current action:
- Current owner:
- Person affected if wrong:
- Frequency:
- Common exception:
- Current failure signal:
- Manual fallback:

**Boundary:** ASSIST / HUMAN OWNS / KEEP MANUAL

**Reason:**

**Named reviewer:**

**What the reviewer must inspect:**

**What must never be inferred:**

**Stop condition:**

Choose **ASSIST** only when the input and output can be checked, the exception can be noticed, and a person can correct the result before harm or an unsupported promise.

Choose **HUMAN OWNS** for claims, scope decisions, sensitive communication, access approval, exceptions, prioritization, closing decisions, and other work where context and accountability matter.

Choose **KEEP MANUAL** when the task is rare, unstable, sensitive, poorly documented, difficult to verify, or more costly to maintain than to perform carefully.

## 3. Test the evidence

For any assisted step, identify the source a reviewer will use:

- Source of truth:
- How current it is:
- Who can correct it:
- Missing-data behavior:
- Conflicting-data behavior:
- Access required:
- Information that must not be copied:

If the result cannot be traced back to evidence a person can inspect, do not treat it as ready.

## 4. Define the human review

Human review is not a label. Write the actual decision.

- Reviewer:
- Moment of review:
- Evidence shown:
- Questions the reviewer answers:
- Changes the reviewer may make:
- Approval record:
- Escalation path:
- Maximum acceptable delay:

The reviewer must have time, authority, context, and a clear way to reject the output. A person clicking “approve” without sufficient evidence is not a meaningful control.

## 5. Plan for failure

Assume the assistance will eventually be unavailable, delayed, incomplete, duplicated, or wrong.

- How is failure detected?
- Who receives the error?
- What customer promise could be affected?
- How is duplicate work prevented?
- How is the step completed manually?
- What access can be revoked?
- What record supports investigation?
- What condition pauses the workflow?

A silent failure is not acceptable merely because the expected path worked once.

## 6. Minimize data and access

List the information the step actually needs:

- Required data:
- Unnecessary data to exclude:
- Where data is stored:
- Who can access it:
- Retention or deletion rule:
- Test-data source:
- Secrets or credentials involved:

Use fictional or safely controlled records during testing. Do not place real customer information in prompts, demonstrations, screenshots, or third-party tools without an authorized and understood reason.

## 7. Run a small pilot

Define a limited, reversible pilot:

- Exact step under test:
- Number and type of controlled examples:
- Start date:
- Reviewer:
- Expected result:
- Acceptable correction rate:
- Stop condition:
- Manual fallback:
- Evidence to retain:
- Review date:

Test:

- [ ] Expected input.
- [ ] Missing input.
- [ ] Conflicting input.
- [ ] Duplicate input.
- [ ] Withdrawal or stop request.
- [ ] Delayed or unavailable assistance.
- [ ] Incorrect output.
- [ ] Manual completion.

Do not widen the pilot until the exception paths are understood.

## 8. Review the result

- Effort before:
- Effort during the pilot:
- Corrections required:
- Failures observed:
- Privacy or access concerns:
- Promise or quality concerns:
- Maintenance work created:
- Work genuinely removed:
- Person still accountable:

Final decision:

- [ ] ASSIST with the documented review and fallback.
- [ ] HUMAN OWNS; use assistance only to organize evidence.
- [ ] KEEP MANUAL.
- [ ] Stop and investigate before deciding.

Reason and evidence:

Next review date:

## Practical examples

Potential **ASSIST** work includes formatting a complete record, routing a validated inquiry to its named owner, assembling a draft from approved facts, or reminding the owner about a visible due date. These examples still require testing and a reviewer.

Potential **HUMAN OWNS** work includes deciding fit, changing scope, making a promise, approving customer-facing language, interpreting an exception, granting access, or closing an inquiry.

Potential **KEEP MANUAL** work includes rare sensitive cases, disputed facts, ambiguous consent, high-consequence decisions, workflows with no reliable source of truth, and steps where assistance adds more supervision than it removes.

These are prompts for evaluation, not universal classifications.

## Accountability statement

Write the final boundary in one sentence:

> Assistance may __________. Human review owns __________. The workflow stops when __________. If assistance fails, __________ completes the work manually.

Name the accountable person:

## Limitations

This worksheet is a general planning aid. It does not test a vendor, inspect code, validate consent, secure access, approve a workflow, or prove that assistance is accurate, safe, lawful, fair, accessible, or beneficial. It is **not legal, privacy, security, or compliance advice** and is not a professional certification.

No worksheet can transfer accountability to a model, vendor, integration, or automated rule. A human remains responsible for claims, quality, permission, access, consequential decisions, customer commitments, exceptions, final communication, and the decision to stop.

## Version and updates

Version 1.0 is the first published edition. Material corrections or changes to the review framework receive a new visible version and dated history entry on MethodCo.org. Downloaded copies do not update themselves.

Personal-use license: you may adapt this worksheet for your own work. Do not resell, redistribute, or use it to imply certification, legal approval, safety approval, or MethodCo endorsement of a tool or live workflow.