Groundwork

AI Blueprint

Acceleration Without Compromise

THE PROBLEM

AI accelerates output, not outcomes

AI makes speed cheap; personas generated instantly, PRDs drafted beautifully, roadmaps built confidently. Under pressure, teams let AI do the thinking without customer research, problem clarity, or strategic grounding that make decisions durable. Research shows AI exposes weak fundamentals: teams become more confident in less accurate work, moving faster toward wrong outcomes.

THE SOLUTION

Learn to use AI as a Productive Partner

The AI Blueprint Program pairs AI’s speed with rigorous customer practices. In two weeks, move from insights to validated foundations (problem, persona, needs) to tested prototypes—not because prototyping is hard, but because establishing customer-backed foundations at speed is. Learn when to trust AI and when to validate, maintaining rigor while accelerating what matters.

The Groundwork AI Blueprint helps product teams apply AI to real business opportunities while establishing the customer-centric foundations and repeatable practices required to build the right products, not just build faster. Teams work on a real business opportunity and use AI as a true partner throughout the process, pairing today’s most effective AI tools with proven product-led practices to accelerate progress without compromising judgment or rigor. The work is applied, iterative, and grounded in real customer feedback. Teams move deliberately from foundations to direction to prototypes, using AI to speed learning, sharpen decisions, and maintain momentum as the work evolves.  It’s fast paced and will intentionally challenge your current ways of working!
Software Team

Why the Groundwork AI Blueprint is Different

2 Weeks from insights to tested prototypes

  • Day 0 – 8 hours: Foundation setting. Establish your customer foundations: scoped problem, evidence-based persona, and prioritized customer needs that will guide all downstream work.
  • Days 1-10 – 4 hours daily (2 hours coached, 2 hours team prep):
  • Each day, the team applies a repeatable AI-accelerated step within the process of discovery through validation.
  • There are two customer validation checkpoints using lean research practices (5-7 participants per study).
  • Your coach ensures you’re building judgment and practices to replicate this on every future opportunity.

Applied to Real Work

We work with you to choose an actual business opportunity your team is facing right now.  This allow the team to get hands-on.

Every artifact the team creates (customer foundations artifacts, AI-ready PRD, interactive prototypes, executive deck) is work they’ll use immediately after the workshop. They’re building real momentum on what matters most to your business.

Modern AI tools + Proven practices

We pair AI acceleration with coaching that builds judgment, not just output:

  • Accelerate every phase—customer research synthesis, AI-Ready PRD drafting, rapid prototyping—while maintaining critical thinking at each step.
  • Use our proven, reusable prompt libraries that effectively translate customer insights into well-scoped problems, actionable personas, and prioritized customer needs that set projects up for success.
  • Learn when to trust AI outputs and how and when to question them, building a repeatable practice that improves decision quality, not just velocity.

Lean customer validation

Two validation checkpoints built into the program using proven small-sample research practices (5-7 participants per study).

Your coach guides you through hypothesis development, structured interview scripting, and rapid synthesis all designed to provide real signal when large-scale studies aren’t possible due to timing or cost constraints.

Guided by tenured product executives

Your dedicated coach is a former or currently operating product executive with 20+ years leading teams. They’ve built products, scaled organizations, and navigated real constraints.  That enables them to adapt the program to your team’s context and coach them through the messy realities, not just the ideal process.

Ethan Mollick, (Professor at Wharton School, Author of Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI)
“AI doesn’t fix broken processes—it accelerates them. If your decision-making is flawed, AI will help you make bad decisions faster.”
Cassie Kozyrkov (Former Chief Decision Scientist at Google)
“The fundamental capability in an AI-enabled world is not prompt engineering—it’s critical thinking. The ability to evaluate whether an AI output is right, wrong, or needs refinement is what separates value creation from value destruction.”
Harvard Business School research on AI collaboration 2023
“Teams perform best when they treat AI as a collaborator whose output must be questioned, not an oracle whose answers should be accepted at face value. The quality of AI-augmented work depends entirely on human judgment.”
Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI)
While AI reduces the perceived cognitive effort in knowledge work, it risks diminishing critical thinking through over-reliance. This risk appears heightened when users lack domain expertise or place excessive confidence in the AI.

Program Details

Customer Foundations

Day 0

8 Hours

Customer Foundations

8 Hours

Partner with AI, utilizing Groundwork’s proven prompt libraries and tools to synthesize your existing customer insights into the critical customer artifacts that will ensure a customer-backed approach to product building.

Homework: Finalize the customer foundations to ensure a solid foundation going forward.

Ideation

Day 1

2 hours

Ideation

Leverage AI and design thinking techniques to collaboratively ideate and prioritize the most impactful ideas.

Homework: Align on 1-2 ideas to take forward into the program

Vision to MVP

Day 2

2 Hours

Vision to MVP

Leverage AI and design thinking techniques to develop a vision for the chosen idea and prioritize what must come first to validate your biggest assumptions.

Homework: Finalize MVP scope.

Lo-Fi Concept Development

Day 3

2 Hours

Concept Development

The team will use AI to rapidly stand up lo-fi concepts for early customer testing, validating critical hypotheses before investing in prototypes. They’ll select the strongest concepts and draft a targeted interview script, preparing for their first customer checkpoint.

Homework: Prepare for customer Interviews

Customer Checkpoint #1

Day 4

3-5 Interviews

Customer Checkpoint #1

Validate critical assumptions by interviewing 3–5 customers. These sessions are held remotely with the entire team observing to ensure a shared understanding.

Homework: Making accessible all interview transcripts and notes

AI-Ready PRD Development

Day 5

2 Hours

AI-Ready PRD

Leverage AI and design thinking techniques to collectively synthesize the research into action. Translate these actions and decisions into AI-ready prototyping requirements.

Homework: Finalize AI-Ready PRD

Prototyping

Day 6

2 Hours

Prototyping

Using modern AI prototyping tools, the team will begin working on their prototype(s.) They’ll collaboratively combine ideas and prototypes where desired.

Homework: Continue building and memorializing major hypotheses in preparation for testing.

Prototyping & Planning

Day 7

2 Hours

Prototyping & Planning

We’ll continue building and finalizing our first set of prototypes to test. The team will spend time prioritizing their key hypotheses and planning for their next customer checkpoint.

Homework: Interview 3-5 customers to validate key assumptions.

Customer Checkpoint #2

Day 8

3-5 Interviews

Customer Checkpoint #2

Validate additional hypotheses by interviewing 3–5 customers. These sessions are held remotely with the entire team observing to ensure a shared understanding.

Homework: Making accessible all interview transcripts and notes

Synthesize & Decide

Day 9

2 Hours

Synthesize & Decide

The team will collaboratively synthesize the results of the checkpoint using AI and design thinking techniques. They have time to iterate on their prototypes before demo day.

Homework: Develop a demo day presentation for leadership

Demo Day

Day 10

2 Hours

Demo Day

The team presents an executive narrative covering the problem, success criteria, key customer insights, tested prototype, and next steps. Leaders see real progress and ask questions.

Demo Day is also Graduation Day!

Get Started Today