How can business and IT teams avoid talking past each other in an AI project?
Before you build, ask the business expert and the technical expert to describe the same assignment. Put their two descriptions side by side and look for gaps. Then write one shared acceptance standard in ordinary language.
The innovation discussion emphasized designing with the people doing the work, and a practical first step is to have both groups describe one assignment.
Have the business expert walk through a recent case, including the result the recipient needed, while the technical expert explains the proposed information flow and the actions the system would take. Look for a business exception missing from the technical plan, or a system constraint missing from what the business expects.
A hard case comes before more building
The acceptance standard covers what the workflow must do, what it must leave to a person and what should happen when information is missing. Then repeat the exercise with a difficult case. Shared vocabulary helps, but a shared example is harder to misunderstand. The team should be able to point at the same finished task and agree on why it's ready, so nobody ends up approving two different versions of the project.
What to try this week
Choose one recent case and have both experts describe it separately, in ordinary language. Compare the two accounts before the next build step.