The Delegation Test
You have a task, and a machine offering to do it. Five questions, one honest verdict, and a lantern that ends up in whichever hand should hold it. Answer for the task in front of you, not for tasks in general.
Before you play
Name the task if you like, then pick the answer nearest the truth for each question. There are no trick answers. The verdict follows the fifth, with its reasons and what, if anything, would change it. Where the setup could be different, you can redesign it and see whether the verdict moves. On a keyboard, 1, 2 and 3 answer.
Nothing is recorded or sent anywhere. The verdict, and the task if you name it, stay on this page and belong to you.
What the five questions are asking
Stakes, undo, checking, answering, voice. The first asks how far the task can fall; the second, whether a fall can be caught; the third, whether you would even see it fall. The fourth asks who is standing underneath when it does, and the fifth whether the task is still itself once someone else has done it.
Two of the five are not like the others. Whether a task can be undone, and whether it can be checked, are facts about how the work is set up rather than what the work is, and a setup can be redesigned: a draft instead of a send, a sandbox instead of the live system, a test, a source to compare against, a second reader who knows the field. That is why the verdict ends with what would change it, and why it lets you try the change. Often the wisest answer to “should I hand this over?” is “not yet, and not like that”.
One rule overrides the arithmetic. Each answer scores nought, one or two, so five make a score out of ten: two or less is “Delegate freely”, up to six is “Delegate, then verify”, and seven or more is “Keep the human hand”. But a task with even one answer at the far edge never earns “Delegate freely”, however mild the other four. A total is kind to the gravest risk in a list; a verdict should not be.
The lines are a judgement call. The test is a prompt for your own thinking, not a substitute for it, which is rather the point.
Whatever the verdict, one thing never changes hands: a machine can take the work, but the answering for it stays with you.
The book-length version of this judgement — when to hand over, when to hold, and how to stay the author of your own decisions — is Taming the Machine.