AI Workflow Pilot Readiness Assessment
Before an AI workflow goes live, a team needs more than a promising demo. Use eight checks to expose missing ownership, baseline measures, evaluation, and fallback evidence—then start a smaller, more defensible pilot.
Check a proposed pilot
Choose the best current answer. This is a planning aid, not a certification, legal assessment, or risk guarantee.
Score evidence, not enthusiasm
Each check has equal weight: yes is one point, partly is half a point, and no is zero. The score is a transparent conversation starter, not a prediction of value or safety.
“Ready to pilot” requires evidence for all eight checks. A missing human owner and missing fallback together produce “Not ready,” because neither an automated tool nor a vague plan can take responsibility when a pilot needs to stop.
Turn the result into a pilot plan
- 1. Scope one workflow. Pick a bounded process and state which decision remains human.
- 2. Record a baseline. Measure the current outcome before asking whether the pilot improved it.
- 3. Set a review date. Define the metric, quality sample, escalation owner, and fallback before use.
- 4. Pilot, inspect, and decide. Compare observed results with the baseline; do not infer broad readiness from a demo.
What this assessment does not decide
This tool does not determine legal compliance, security approval, model suitability, or whether a pilot will deliver financial value. It cannot replace domain review, affected-worker input, security assessment, or monitoring. Treat a partial answer as a prompt to gather evidence rather than a reason to hide uncertainty.
The checks are an AQ Score planning model informed by the voluntary NIST AI Risk Management Framework, which helps organizations incorporate trustworthiness considerations into AI design, development, use, and evaluation. AQ Score is not affiliated with NIST, and this result is not a NIST assessment.
Plan the economic case after the readiness check
Once a pilot has ownership and measurement evidence, model its time and cost assumptions separately. An ROI estimate should not substitute for quality, safety, or worker input.