process
What It Means
A process is a repeatable series of steps that transforms something from one state to another to achieve a specific business outcome. It's like a recipe that teams follow consistently - whether that's onboarding new employees, reviewing AI model performance, or handling customer complaints. Every process has clear inputs (what goes in), activities (what happens), and outputs (what comes out).
Why Chief AI Officers Care
Well-defined processes are critical for AI governance, ensuring models are developed, deployed, and monitored consistently across the organization. Without documented processes, AI initiatives become unpredictable, compliance becomes impossible to demonstrate, and scaling AI capabilities turns chaotic. Mature processes also enable automation and reduce the risk of human error in critical AI operations.
Real-World Example
An AI model deployment process might include steps like: data scientist submits model for review — security team runs vulnerability scans — model performance is validated on test data — legal approves for compliance — model gets deployed to production — monitoring dashboards are configured. Each step has defined inputs, responsible parties, and criteria for moving to the next step.
Common Confusion
People often confuse processes with procedures or workflows - a process is the high-level flow of activities, while procedures are the detailed instructions for each step. Many organizations also mistake ad-hoc activities that happen repeatedly for actual processes, when true processes require documentation, ownership, and consistent execution.
Industry-Specific Applications
See how this term applies to healthcare, finance, manufacturing, government, tech, and insurance.
Healthcare: In healthcare, processes must adhere to strict regulatory frameworks like HIPAA for data privacy, FDA guidelines for med...
Finance: In finance, processes ensure regulatory compliance, data accuracy, and risk management through standardized workflows li...
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Includes:
- 6 industry-specific applications
- Relevant regulations by sector
- Real compliance scenarios
- Implementation guidance
Technical Definitions
NISTNational Institute of Standards and Technology
"A sequence or flow of activities in an organization with the objective of carrying out work, which may include a set of activities, events, tasks, and decisions in a sequenced flow that adhere to finite execution semantics. Process levels will generally follow structure at the capability maturity model integration (CMMI) level."Source: IEEE_Guide_IPA
"Set of interrelated or interacting activities that transforms inputs into outputs"Source: IEEE_Soft_Vocab
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