Expectation alignment begins with measured evidence. Option A gives stakeholders the median experience through p50 latency and the slower-tail experience through p95, then compares both with the agreed SLA. The measurements should reflect representative input sizes, concurrency, retrieval activity, tool calls, geographic routing, and cache conditions.
If the target remains infeasible after reasonable optimization, Option E establishes the correct governance response. The architect should collaboratively revise the SLA, scope, cost envelope, model choice, or user-experience design rather than silently accepting a breach or making unilateral changes. Any revision should document the business impact and accepted trade-offs.
Option B commits all resources before the problem’s severity, causes, and business priority have been established. Option C wrongly treats latency as uncontrollable; model selection, prompt length, retrieval depth, caching, streaming, and architecture can materially affect it. Option D introduces an unvalidated provider and could create quality, security, compliance, and integration regressions.
Expectation management is not merely communicating bad news. It requires transparent measurements, credible optimization options, explicit trade-offs, and jointly approved commitments that the production architecture can actually satisfy.
Study Guide references/topics: SLA alignment; p50 and p95 latency; stakeholder negotiation; evidence-based communication; architectural trade-offs; production constraints.
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