We are automating our service delivery to improve our margins for an exit, and we need to assign accountability for maintaining and updating our proprietary AI prompts and LLM fine-tuning. Our Head of Operations says this is a technology seat, while our Head of Technology says operations must own their own tools. How do we resolve this ownership debate on our Accountability Chart?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To resolve this conflict, you must look at who owns the ultimate outcome of the work. On your Accountability Chart, every seat must have clear roles and responsibilities, and there must be one name accountable for each seat to avoid finger-pointing. Technology seats are responsible for infrastructure, security, integrations, and ensuring the systems run without downtime. Operations seats are responsible for the actual delivery of your service, client satisfaction, and operational efficiency. Since proprietary AI prompts and LLM fine-tuning directly dictate the quality and speed of your client deliverables, this accountability belongs in the Operations seat. Operations owns the workflow and the output. If the AI output is poor, it is an operations problem, not an IT problem. Your Head of Technology is correct that operations must own their own tools. Technology should support this by setting up the infrastructure, managing API access, and ensuring data security. But the actual optimization of the prompts and training of the models must be owned by the people who understand the service delivery standard. Update your Accountability Chart to reflect this. Add a specific role under your Operations seat for AI tool optimization and output quality. This ensures that as you prepare for an exit, buyers can see a clear operational workflow where the delivery team directly manages and refines their own automated tools, driving higher margins without relying on constant IT intervention.