A priority list can still produce the wrong sequence

We ran those workshops at three in the morning to fit the time zones. Business teams, technology teams and market leads worked through where AI would make the biggest difference, what each use case was worth, what it depended on and what had to happen first.

The sessions went well, and the prioritised list that came out of them was a good one.

A few weeks after the summary went in, the client came back. Several of the top use cases were already being built. One was underway at headquarters and two in markets that had not been part of the exercise. Nobody could say clearly who owned them or how far along they were.

The list made sense, but it did not account for the work already in progress.

That matters because a new priority list does not change what is already funded, staffed and underway. Existing work keeps consuming capacity until someone decides to redirect it.

Across headquarters, markets and functions, the picture is often fragmented. So the ranking can be right and the sequence still wrong, because the list covers the work being proposed and not everything else already in motion.