Span of Control (redefined)
How many agents a human can supervise effectively. It depends on evals, traces, and gates.
In one sentence
How many agents a human can supervise effectively. It replaces the classic “how many direct reports per manager” question and depends directly on well-designed evals, monitoring, and gates.
Before
How many direct reports per manager
What it does
How many agents a human supervises
After
Depends on evals, traces, and gates
Example
Marina supervises six agentic processes. That’s only possible because each one has an eval running, a cost and escalation-rate dashboard, and defined gates.
Without instrumentation, the number drops to one or two, and she spends the day reviewing instead of managing.
In practice
- Measure before giving an opinion: how many processes, and with what instruments.
- Increase the number by improving instrumentation. Piling on workload doesn’t work: without an eval and a dashboard, the number drops on its own.
- If the person is reviewing output, they are operating, not supervising.
How to make it tangible
Count how many agentic processes each person supervises and with what instruments.
Translated from Portuguese with AI assistance.