How long does the Lean AI Strategy engagement take?

The Lean AI Strategy is delivered in four weeks. Week one is discovery and stakeholder interviews. Weeks two and three are opportunity analysis and scoring. Week four is the final output: a documented strategy with prioritised AI opportunities, build briefs ready to commission, and a phased roadmap your team can execute.

What does Ferrous Labs deliver at the end of a Lean AI Strategy?

You receive a documented AI strategy including a scored shortlist of prioritised opportunities with business cases, detailed build briefs for the top two or three, and a phased roadmap that sequences quick wins against longer-term capability builds. Everything is written for your team to act on immediately.

Who is the Lean AI Strategy designed for?

It is designed for leadership teams that know AI matters but have not converted interest into a clear plan. It works best when you have a range of AI ideas but no agreed priorities, when the engineering team is too busy for exploratory work, or when you need external expertise to cut through vendor noise and build a strategy your organisation can actually execute.

Build 01 — Lean AI Strategy

Get the strategy your
whole team trusts.

Clarity before commitment. A documented AI strategy with prioritised opportunities, build briefs ready to commission, and a phased roadmap.

£8,000 · 5 days of effort · Delivered over 2 weeks · 2–3 workshops

The fee credits in full against the delivery of any opportunity you commission from the roadmap.

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Who this is for

Built for leaders who need
clarity before they commit.

You know AI matters but not where to start.

The possibilities are overwhelming. You need someone to cut through the noise and tell you which build is worth commissioning first.

You've tried something that didn't deliver.

A pilot. A tool. A freelancer. It didn't land. You need a method, not another experiment — and a documented decision you can defend.

You need your team aligned.

Different people have different ideas about what AI should do. You need a structured engagement that ends with everyone on the same page.

What you walk away with

Three deliverables you can use today.

A documented AI strategy.

Prioritised list of 3–5 AI opportunities, scored on impact, feasibility, and data readiness.

Build briefs.

For your top 1–2 opportunities — what to build, why, what it costs, the data needed, the success metric, and the order of work. Anyone — us or another vendor — can start from these.

A phased roadmap.

A phased plan your whole team trusts, with clear next steps and decision points.

How we build this

The Science of Lean AI Strategy™.

Lean AI Strategy is the Science of AI operating at the portfolio level — not one project, but your entire AI landscape. The Opportunity Finder generates hypotheses. The workshop experiments to validate them. The roadmap formulates the plan. Execution bridges to delivery.

Stage 01 — Hypothesis (workshop 1)

Surface the full opportunity landscape

You complete the AI Opportunity Finder beforehand. In workshop, we Wardley-map each of your functions and surface the AI opportunities the Finder wouldn't catch. The full opportunity list is then scored on Impact, Feasibility, and Data readiness.

Output: ranked opportunity list.

Stage 02 — Experiment (workshop 2)

Define hypotheses for the top opportunities

For the top three opportunities, we build use case diagrams, define hypotheses with measurable success metrics, and sketch the smallest experiment that would test each one.

Output: defined experiment scope per opportunity.

Stage 03 — Formulation (Ferrous-side work)

Build the costed roadmap

We estimate the sprint mix (R&D Sprint + Dev Sprints) for each opportunity and sequence them into a phased roadmap.

Output: costed roadmap.

Stage 04 — Execution (workshop 3)

Present, decide, and proceed

We present the roadmap to your leadership team. Go/no-go on each opportunity. SOW and MSA issued where you proceed.

Output: go/no-go decisions + signed SOW where applicable.

How it fits with the other builds

~50% of clients commission a build within 90 days.

The Lean AI Strategy is its own deliverable — a documented, costed roadmap you can take to the market or to your board. It also doubles as the cleanest way to enter a build with us. The £8,000 fee credits against the delivery of any opportunity you commission from the roadmap, so if you proceed to build, the strategy phase is effectively free.

We take two new Lean AI Strategy clients per month — workshop time is the constraint.

See all five builds

Ready to find your highest-impact build?

Take the Opportunity Finder.
Or talk to us.

Five minutes. Immediate output. Or kick off the strategy build with a Discovery Call.