Start with these five checks.
- Name the user and decision that changes.
- Freeze outcome and guardrail thresholds.
- Evaluate representative, difficult and missing-data cases.
- Measure latency, cost and human review.
- Assign workflow, risk and integration owners.
Ask for only what can change the answer.
- Task setInputs, decisions and expected evidence
- BaselineCurrent human or rule process
- EvaluationRubric, labels and hidden holdout
- OperationsLatency, cost and review path
- ControlsAccess, monitoring and rollback
- OwnershipProduct, workflow, risk and engineering
Test one reversible move.
Run the existing candidate in shadow mode on a fixed representative task set. Log model version, evidence, tool calls, output, reviewer decision, latency and cost. Promote only if it passes pre-set outcome and guardrail thresholds; otherwise the failure breakdown determines whether to change data, workflow, model or scope.
A decision your team can use.
- 01A production-gap diagnosis
- 02A locked evaluation harness
- 03Operating and risk requirements
- 04A go, revise or stop decision
Common questions.
What is the difference between a demo and PoC?
A demo shows capability; a PoC tests a specific decision against a baseline and acceptance criteria.
When is it ready for a pilot?
After hidden evaluation passes and the workflow has an owner, controls, monitoring, review and rollback.
Should a better model be tried first?
Only when failure analysis shows model capability is the constraint rather than data, workflow or integration.