Leadership · 1 day
AI Architecture Workshop
A facilitated workshop for technical teams, architects and engineering leaders around a real customer problem. The output is an architecture and a next-step roadmap, not a training certificate.
1 day · Leadership · Workshops · Technical teams, architects and engineering leaders
Overview
This is consultancy delivered as a structured workshop. Your team brings a real problem. Cognitecta facilitates a day that produces clarified requirements, an AI suitability assessment, architecture options, risks, a recommended approach, an initial technical architecture and a next-step roadmap.
The day is not a lecture with a case study bolted on. It uses a repeatable method: problem framing, constraints, data and systems, options, risks, and a recommendation that can be owned by the people who will deliver it. Training content is used only where it helps the decision.
Participants should include the people who will own the system. The workshop fails if the only output is a diagram nobody is accountable for.
Your organisation leaves with artefacts it can put in front of delivery, security and budget, and a clear account of what would still need discovery or a proof of concept.
Audience
Technical teams, architects and engineering leaders with a live problem that might be an AI system — or might not.
Prerequisites
A real problem, identified stakeholders, and access to people who know the current systems and constraints. No particular AI course is required, though a shared fundamentals session beforehand often improves the conversation.
Duration
1 day
Can be run as a half-day framing session, or extended with a follow-on design day. Preparation with the customer before the workshop is part of the engagement.
Learning outcomes
- 01
Clarify requirements, constraints and what would constitute a successful outcome.
- 02
Assess whether AI is a suitable approach, and what would remain conventional software.
- 03
Compare architecture options with an honest view of data, identity, risk and operations.
- 04
Identify the main risks and the work that would retire them.
- 05
Recommend an approach and an initial technical architecture.
- 06
Agree a next-step roadmap with owners.
Outline
- 01
Frame the problem
- Outcomes, users, constraints, and the current system of record.
- Data, identity and operational reality, not the hoped-for estate.
- Exercise: write the problem so that a delivery team could not misunderstand it.
- 02
Suitability and options
- AI suitability: what the model would do, and what it must not do.
- Architecture options: retrieval, tools, workflows, batch, human review.
- Risks: security, quality, cost, vendor, and organisational ownership.
- Exercise: score options against constraints rather than preference.
- 03
Recommendation and roadmap
- A recommended approach and an initial technical architecture.
- What to prove next, what to build, and what to refuse.
- Roadmap, owners and the decision points after the workshop.
- Playback: artefacts the organisation can take into delivery and security review.
Practical work
Facilitated working session on your organisation’s problem. You produce written artefacts: problem statement, suitability assessment, options, risks, recommended architecture and a next-step roadmap. Cognitecta facilitates and contributes architecture judgement; your organisation owns the decision.
Takeaways
- Clarified requirements and success criteria
- AI suitability assessment
- Architecture options and a recommended approach
- Risks, initial technical architecture and a next-step roadmap
Delivery
Cognitecta delivers private corporate training, on-site or as remote live training. Courses can be run as published, or adapted to your organisation’s stack, domain and experience level.
Instructor
Nicholas Johnson, AI architect and software engineer. He has a degree in Artificial Intelligence and around twenty years of professional technology training, including hundreds of courses for engineering teams and large organisations. About.
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