Playbooks

Digital Work Portfolio

The boring table that enables upgrades, automation, and AI integration into workflows. Tools don’t equal capability. If you can’t list it, you can’t govern it. First choose an area of friction where you may be thinking of adding AI layer or other upgrades, and run these steps.

Playbook 10–12 min Public

Start here if the room is already shouting about AI

You can’t prioritise what you can’t see.

You can’t govern what nobody can list.

Clarity before scale.

In 60 seconds

Most teams aren’t short on digital. They’re short on visibility: what exists, who owns it, what people actually rely on, and what should stop.

A digital asset here means anything repeatable that produces an outcome people depend on: dashboards, workflows, automations, scripts, data pipelines, bots, forms, and system-embedded SOPs.

Don’t turn this into a six-month inventory project. Pick one boundary, list 10–15 assets, score them quickly, and make one keep / fix / stop call this week.

Jump to Use this when Failure signals First move Full method Failure modes Get the working files

Use this when

The room wants AI, upgrades, or governance, but nobody can name the digital assets already running the work.
Dashboards, workflows, scripts, or bots are relied on every week, but ownership is fuzzy or split.
Stop decisions almost never happen because everything sounds important.
You need one grounded operator move this week, not a giant transformation programme.

What this catches

Invisible digital work. The stuff people depend on every day, but nobody manages as a portfolio: recurring reports, workflows, data feeds, scripts, bots, forms, and embedded rules that quietly run the place.

Typical failure signals

Someone asks for the list of digital assets and the room goes quiet.

The same workflow exists in three places under different names.

People can name tools, but not the repeatable digital work those tools are actually supporting.

AI ideas are showing up before the critical paths are even visible.

Don’t use this when

You need a full enterprise application rationalisation, an audit-grade asset register on day one, or a vendor selection exercise. This playbook is for one boundary, one page, and one decision that gets made now.

What good looks like

In under an hour, one team boundary has a named list of digital assets, named outcome owners, rough reuse/risk/value scoring, and one keep / fix / stop decision with a next action attached.

The first move (under 60 minutes)

Pick one boundary: one team, one function, or one product area.
List 10–15 digital assets people already rely on.
Score quickly: owner + reuse / risk / value.
Circle one pressure point: duplication, hidden risk, trapped value, or noise.
Make one keep / fix / stop call and write one next action that fits inside 30 minutes.

Companion sheet

Want the one-page version for a meeting? Use the companion sheet to run the first session fast.

Open companion sheet Get the editable versions

The full method

The trick isn’t “better governance.” It’s a lightweight way to make digital work comparable. That means one simple table, six plain-English fields, and rough scoring that helps people decide what to keep, fix, or stop.

Keep it rough on purpose. If you wait for perfect data, you’ll turn a useful operator move into another side project.

Asset

Name it the way people actually say it in meetings.

Owner

The person accountable for the outcome if it breaks. Not just the platform team.

Reuse / Risk / Value

Low / Medium / High is enough. The point is comparison, not precision theatre.

Decision

Keep, fix, or stop. Not “review later.” Make the trade-off visible.

How to fill it quickly

Don’t start with the tool list. Start with the repeatable work people rely on.
If two rows sound the same, that’s useful. You may have duplication hiding in plain sight.
If nobody can own a row, don’t skip it. That’s a fix call.
If every row looks “high value,” force comparison. Which rows would genuinely hurt if they disappeared tomorrow?

What changes

Priorities stop being qualitative/emotional and start being comparable.

Ownership gaps show up earlier.

Duplicate work gets easier to retire.

AI and upgrade conversations get more grounded, fast.

Failure modes

It turns into a huge inventory project.

Fix: keep it to 10–15 rows and one boundary.

Ownership turns into a turf war.

Fix: define owner as the person accountable for the outcome, not the hosting tool.

Every row gets labelled “high value.”

Fix: force comparisons between rows instead of scoring in isolation.

Nothing gets stopped.

Fix: set a stop date on at least one low-value noisy asset.

Notes to use internally to kick off meetings

“We’re not starting another big digital programme. We’re making one page of the digital work we already use regularly, naming the owners, scoring risk/value roughly, and making one keep / fix / stop call this week.”

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