What the method does
Purpose before technology. Work before allocation. Requirements before controls. Confirmation after deployment.
The HAOP Method, Version 1.0 · DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21868086
The HAOP method begins with the work system, not a selected AI product. It establishes True Function, reconstructs work-as-done, decomposes actual functions, locates consequential transitions, and defines verification and grounding requirements before deciding whether any function should be delegated.
A legitimate outcome may be constrained deployment, redesign, retention of the existing arrangement, delay, or no deployment. A method whose every analysis ends in deployment is a justification process, not a design method.
The ten-step work-design sequence
Establish True Function and unacceptable outcomes
Separate the safety outcome the workflow claims from the metric, dashboard, approval, or representation that may stand in for it.
Reconstruct work-as-done through learning teams
Work with people who have current contact with the work and can contradict the formal representation without penalty.
Decompose the work into performance functions
Specify what is selected, transformed, routed, suppressed, framed, approved, or acted upon along the actual path work travels.
Locate consequential transitions
Define provisional verification and grounding requirements before assigning a reviewer or automated verifier.
Establish design requirements and boundaries
State the conditions, constraints, evidence, permissions, failure responses, and operating limits each allocated function requires.
Develop and compare alternatives
Include redesigned human-only work, constrained deployment, delay, and no deployment rather than treating adoption as predetermined.
Allocate functions among the three performers
Make allocation decisions with the people who will perform the work at the table. Preserve the human throughline where interpretation, adaptation, or consequence requires it.
Select technology against the specification
Choose a product only after the work-system requirements and allocated function boundaries are known.
Engineer and validate controls across all five hazards
Provide Verification Capacity and Anchor Access; preserve friction, slack, constraints, and pause; place gates inside the Verification Window.
Deploy, learn, monitor, and revalidate
Recheck controls, anchors, gate states, staffing, incentives, data, models, permissions, and operating rates as the work changes.
What the method records
- The work system, objective, and True Function.
- Actual functions and the performer to which each is allocated.
- Consequential transitions and operating conditions.
- Verification Requirement and supplied Verification Capacity across knowledge, evidence, time, and authority.
- Required source, state, dynamics, and work-as-done grounding.
- Named anchors and whether they are applicable, current, valid, and reachable.
- Control, duty, capacity, intervention, and stop authority.
- Evidence used to confirm that the design continues to function.