Workflow prioritisation: what it is
Workflow prioritisation ranks candidate automations by frequency, time cost, error consequence and how well the inputs are already structured. It draws on nothing more than an honest inventory of the working week, which is why it tends to be skipped and why so many projects stall shortly afterwards.
( The Detail )
What the pattern does
The decision it improves is where to start. Teams tend to begin with the most interesting task rather than the most repeated one, then conclude that AI did not help. Ranking first makes the opening project small, dull and likely to work, which is what earns the confidence to attempt the next one.
Looked at from this angle
Start with the plain description: what the pattern takes in, what it produces, and who reads the output. If it cannot be described in two sentences without naming a product, it is probably not a pattern yet - it is a tool somebody liked. Naming the shape first keeps the conversation on the work.
A pattern is deliberately general. It describes an arrangement that recurs across quite different businesses, which is why it survives changes in tooling. The specific software is an implementation detail, and it should be the last decision made rather than the first one argued about.
How to approach it
Begin with the decision rather than the tool. Name the recurring judgement this affects, the information it depends on, and the person accountable for acting on the result. That framing keeps the first build small enough to inspect and useful enough to matter.
Keep a human review point in the loop until the quality and the failure modes are understood. A system that shows its working - what it drew on, where it is uncertain, and what it deliberately left alone - is one a business can keep running after the initial build.
( Next Step )
Start small enough to review, but on a workflow important enough to show whether a better system is worth building.