Readiness and the First Use Case

The best first use case is rarely the most impressive demonstration. It is a meaningful piece of work with a clear owner, accessible knowledge, repeatable decisions and measurable quality.

Assess readiness

Look across five dimensions:

• Value: Is there a recurring bottleneck, quality problem or decision delay worth solving?
• Knowledge: Are the relevant sources accessible, current and attributable?
• Process: Can the workflow, decisions, exceptions and handoffs be described?
• Governance: Is someone accountable for outcomes, controls and risk acceptance?
• Technology: Can the agent access approved models and tools with appropriate security?

Weakness in one dimension does not always prevent a pilot. It tells you what the pilot must learn.

Select the use case

Good early candidates often involve preparation and assurance: synthesizing fit-to-standard outcomes, checking cross-artifact consistency, proposing test coverage or validating gate evidence. These use cases provide value while preserving clear human decisions.

Avoid choosing purely by volume. A document produced quickly but never trusted is not a success.

Define the baseline

Before building, measure today’s cycle time, effort, defects, rework and user experience. Record examples of acceptable and unacceptable outputs. Without a baseline, a pilot easily becomes a collection of anecdotes.

Set an explicit learning objective

A first pilot should answer more than “does the model work?” It should test:

• whether the available knowledge is sufficient.
• whether reviewers understand their responsibilities.
• where escalation is required.
• which controls are effective without adding disproportionate effort.
• how performance changes across processes, countries and project phases.

The result may be a production candidate, a redesigned process or a well-evidenced decision not to automate that work yet. All three can be valuable outcomes.