In your experience using GenAI, do the prompt templates and “prompt engineering” advice being sold online actually make sense in the context of your real project work?
A lot of the examples feel polished and impressive - but sometimes disconnected from the messy, constraint-heavy environments we operate in.
Have you found these prompt frameworks genuinely practical in delivery?
Or have you had to develop your own approach that better fits your workflow?
Curious what’s translated into real value versus what feels more like marketing.
Program Manager| HARPER SRLSanto Domingo / Distrito Nacional, Dominican Republic
Hi Bruce, some of the prompt playbooks are helpful, especially for structure and clarity, but most feel too polished for real project environments. In practice, I’ve had to adapt them heavily. Real delivery work is messy, incomplete, and politically nuanced. Rigid templates rarely survive contact with that reality. What’s translated into value for me is simple: clear context, explicit constraints, and stating the intended audience. The rest tends to be marketing noise more than operational advantage. Saving Changes...
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Excellent question.
In practice, many “prompt engineering” playbooks do not fully translate into real project environments. They are optimized for clean demonstrations, not for messy delivery contexts shaped by governance constraints, stakeholder friction, regulatory pressure, and hard trade-offs.
Are they practical in delivery? Partially. They help structure thinking at an entry level, especially for clarity and output formatting. But in complex, constraint-heavy projects, rigid templates quickly become insufficient.
Has a different approach been necessary? Yes. In real delivery environments, prompting must be embedded into decision workflows. The value does not come from the template itself, but from how it integrates with governance, risk assessment, stakeholder alignment, and measurable impact. The prompt is not the asset. The decision architecture is.
What creates real value versus what feels like marketing? Real value emerges when GenAI is used to clarify intent, surface assumptions, stress-test scenarios, and support accountable judgment under pressure. What feels like marketing is any framework that presents prompting as a shortcut to thinking rather than a disciplined augmentation of it.
In AI-native environments, the critical shift is this: the question is no longer “How do I get a better answer?” but “How do I remain responsible for the judgment behind the answer?”
The future advantage will not come from better prompt libraries. It will come from better-designed human–AI decision systems embedded in real governance and delivery structures. Saving Changes...
Robert WardPrincipal| CSM Business and MobilityRydalmere, Australia
I found the prompt playbooks were very helpful to get started, whereas beforehand I was like a beginner swimmer splashing around but not going anywhere. Now people sometimes compliment my prompts even though I would still count myself a novice.
A second observation is that the pace of change in the technology means a best practice from 6 months ago may no longer be necessary. For example, I've found agentic processing of the prompts means I can now get a better answer from a single, more complex prompt to explore a problem, whereas previously I had more success with a prompt chaining strategy. Saving Changes...
Initially, when I was new to GenAI, prompt frameworks and ready-to-use advice were extremely helpful. They removed the “Where do I even start?” barrier and gave structure to experimentation. As I gained more hands-on experience, I still exploring shared frameworks and insights from LinkedIn and professional forums. However, I became more selective. Instead of adopting templates as-is, I evaluate what aligns with my workflow, project constraints, and delivery context. I’ve found the real value lies in adapting principles. So for me, prompt frameworks were a useful starting point. But sustainable value came from developing a contextual, experience-driven approach. Saving Changes...
I hope if dogs ever take over the world, and they choose a king, they don't just go by size, because I bet there are some Chihuahuas with some good ideas.
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