Proportionate AI governance
An explicit, short policy for AI-assisted work. It sets what the tools may be used for, what data may be sent where, what verification and disclosure each class of change requires, and who owns a change whatever produced it. It is scaled to the risk of the path, reviewed as the tools change, and enforced in the pipeline where possible.
Evidence grade: practice A widely adopted practitioner model with clear provenance.
Use it when
Before or at adoption. Across teams, it is set once at the seams and the choice of tools is left to teams.
Where it stops working
It fails in two mirror-image ways: a blanket prohibition, which people ignore, and no policy at all, which is discovered in an incident.
Where the standard uses it
- TJ-5AI-assisted engineeringAdoption, governance, capability-building, and risk.
Used alongside it
- AI-assisted developer productivity contested
- Security of AI-generated code research
- Staged bets and checkpoints practice
- The ironies of automation practice
Cite this model
Chicago, BibTeX and licence →Engineering Management Academy. (2026). Proportionate AI governance. In Engineering Management Academy Body of Knowledge (Version 3.1, TEC.proportionate-ai-governance). https://www.engineeringmanagement.academy/body-of-knowledge/techniques/proportionate-ai-governance