Delegation Decision Checklist for Everyday Tasks
Use this checklist before starting a task to decide whether to do it yourself, hand it to a teammate, or delegate it to Claude.
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Use this checklist before starting a task to decide whether to do it yourself, hand it to a teammate, or delegate it to Claude.
It works as a quick verification pass: walk the questions in order, and let your answers point you toward the right owner for this specific task.
Deciding, task by task, whether to do something yourself, hand it to a teammate, or delegate it to Claude, using the same set of checks each time.
A single "no" is a signal to look closer, not an automatic disqualification; it often points toward partial delegation, keeping the decision-making part human while delegating the drafting or research part.
If it depends on unwritten institutional knowledge, like team history or relationship context that exists only in people's heads, a teammate who holds that context is usually a better fit than Claude.
Yes. Splitting at the seam between decision and drafting, or between context-dependent and pattern-finding portions, is common and often produces a better result than forcing one owner for the whole task.
Whether you can clearly say who is accountable for the outcome; if the honest answer has to be a specific person, the decision itself belongs to that person, no matter how the rest of the checklist scores.
Usually, because per-item stakes tend to be lower and errors are easier to catch in aggregate, but a high-volume task that touches sensitive individual cases, like performance reviews, can still fail the Accountability checks and need more human involvement.
For small, low-stakes, routine tasks, the checklist becomes close to instant with practice; for anything unfamiliar, high-stakes, or ambiguous, running through it deliberately is worth the extra minute.
Move on to writing a clear description, context, constraints, and the actual goal, so Claude can act on the delegation decision you just made.
Treat that as a sign the task type is context-dependent rather than fixed, and keep running the checklist per instance instead of assuming a past answer still applies.
No, the checklist only decides who should attempt the task first; reviewing the resulting output before relying on it is still necessary regardless of who or what produced it.
Stack versions: Written against the Claude model lineup current as of ~June 2026 - Claude Fable 5, Claude Opus 4.8, Claude Sonnet 5 (the default), and Claude Haiku 4.5. Model names, pricing, and product features move quickly - verify current specifics at platform.claude.com/docs before relying on them.
Reviewed by Chris St. John·Last updated Jul 16, 2026