AI consultant walks away from 50-hour discovery: you find scope by building, not estimating
alex_verem · x · 2026-10-16
A VP at a PE-owned distributor hired a consultant for a 50-hour AI discovery; the consultant said scoping alone would take 100-150 hours and walked.
The author argues AI work can't be scoped from the outside, and proposes an alternative playbook:
- Pick one workflow that matters to the business
- Find the internal owner of that workflow
- Commit to a dated deliverable, not an hourly rate
- Build inside the client's own environment from week one
- If it doesn't land, the client doesn't pay
The takeaway: scope emerges from building the first piece — everything before that is a guess with a cost attached.
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