When everyone in the community is chasing multi-agent systems, it’s hard to say no to one in your own design.
I feel that pull too. So I ask myself five questions based on what I’ve read, and the third one matters most.
𝟭. 𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗽𝘀 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻? If they rarely change, a workflow is cheaper and far easier to debug.
𝟮. 𝗗𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗵 𝘃𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗽𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗻 𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻’𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗰𝘁? Debugging an unusual production failure often does. Extracting fields from invoices usually doesn’t.
𝟯. 𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗰𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁? Every other answer depends on this one. If you can’t score the output, you can’t tell whether an agent outperforms a workflow or whether it’s improving. Without a way to evaluate results, choosing an agent is a guess.
𝟰. 𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗱 𝗮 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝘀𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗽𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘂𝗽? A long-running process that fails can produce a wrong answer in the same confident tone as a correct one. If one such mistake is costly, the bar for choosing an agent goes way up.
𝟱. 𝗜𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘁? You can’t answer that without knowing the success rate, which brings you back to question three.
Quote:
“Many use cases positioned as agentic today don’t require agentic implementations.”
Anushree Verma, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner, June 2025
