Module 6 • 22 min
Governance and Human-in-the-Loop Design
Define the checkpoints, guardrails, and escalation paths appropriate to the use case.What This Decision Controls
Human oversight preserves accountability when confidence is low, consequences are high, or policy requires review.
This decision affects the reliability, cost, governance burden, and operating value of the agent long after the first demonstration.
How to Evaluate It
Specify who reviews exceptions, what signals trigger escalation, and what the agent may never do autonomously.
Work from a real workflow and real constraints. A technically possible design is not automatically the right operating design for your organization.
Decision Checklist
- State the business outcome and the bounded task the agent must support.
- Identify the accountable business owner, technical owner, and required human reviewer.
- Confirm the data, integrations, escalation path, and metric required before a build decision.
Worked Decision Scenario
A recruiting assistant can summarize applications and schedule interviews, but it may not rank candidates or reject applicants without a recruiter review. The boundary is based on the consequence of the decision, not on whether the technology can perform it.
The recruiting lead defines confidence thresholds, exception alerts, and a review queue. The resulting design preserves accountability while still removing repetitive coordination work.
Apply it
Architecture Exercise
Design an oversight boundary.
Saved locally for this review prototype. Your response will become private account data when the approved course backend is connected.