Published June 26, 2026
Pick one question worth answering better
AI is not a useful project objective on its own. Start with a recurring decision or information problem: finding relevant incident guidance, summarizing known exceptions, or identifying patterns worth investigating. Identify who will use the result and what they will do next. A bounded question is easier to evaluate than a general promise to optimize the warehouse, and it helps determine whether simpler rules or reporting would already provide the needed relief.
Inspect the information foundation
Check source ownership, event definitions, data quality, freshness, and access permissions. A fluent answer can still be wrong when the underlying information is incomplete or outdated. Preserve source references where useful and make uncertainty visible. Do not send confidential customer records, employee data, credentials, or production exports to an unapproved service. Data handling and retention need an agreed design before a pilot begins.
Separate advice from execution
Explaining a pattern or suggesting an investigation is different from changing inventory, canceling orders, or replaying interfaces. Define what the system may do and which actions require human review. Keep any execution authority narrow, auditable, and explicitly authorized. The first useful application may be entirely advisory. Automation should be justified by reliable evidence and controlled recovery, not by the fact that a model can produce a plausible recommendation.
Evaluate difficult and out-of-scope cases
Use representative questions, ambiguous inputs, missing information, and requests the system should refuse or route to a person. Compare answers with trusted references and subject-matter review. Track whether the tool admits limitations instead of inventing a confident answer. For predictions or anomaly signals, compare with a meaningful baseline and review false alarms. A compelling demonstration is not enough to establish dependable operational usefulness.
Judge success by the burden removed
Measure whether users find information faster, investigate more clearly, or make a better-supported decision. Include correction effort, review time, and new risks in the assessment. Keep a feedback route and a responsible owner for changes. The objective is to make people’s work easier and more trustworthy—not to add another screen whose confident output they must spend the rest of the shift checking and repairing.
Use with your team
Working checklist
Checks are temporary and are not saved or submitted. Use Print / save PDF for your working copy.
Educational guidance. Apply it to your product, version, operating conditions, and agreed controls; it is not a project-specific solution design.
Explore ai enablement