AI readiness assessment

Is your business ready for AI?

Most "AI pilots" fail for the same four reasons: data is a mess, there's no written policy, no one on the team ships with AI, and the use case is vague. This assessment scores you on each dimension and tells you which tier you're actually in: ship now, run a scoped pilot, or fix foundations first.

The three tiers

Ship Now Tier

Data, skills, budget, policy, and named use cases are all in place. The risk now is overthinking. Pick 2 use cases with measurable baselines, give them a 12-week window, and measure. Buy the tools you need. Escalate to leadership only when a project stalls or a decision exceeds a threshold.

Pilot Tier

You can ship a scoped internal pilot safely while hardening the foundations in parallel. Use the pilot budget to stand up data lineage, draft a real AI policy, and train 2-3 champions. Re-assess in 90 days.

Foundation Tier

Buying AI tools right now will disappoint leadership and burn political capital. Spend 90 days on a data audit, a draft acceptable-use policy, and 1-2 internal skill-up tracks before any vendor conversation. The failure rate for AI pilots at this tier is 60-70% — high enough that "do nothing" is a better first move than "buy something."

What the 6 questions measure

• Data: Can you find, trust, and govern the data an AI system will see?
• Security / policy: Is there a written AUP, DPAs with vendors, DLP on AI inputs?
• Skills: Are there people on the team who ship with AI, or is it all vendors?
• Budget: Is there real money allocated, or just "we should do AI"?
• Use case: Is there a named, measurable use case with a baseline?
• Governance: Is there a defined approval and review process?

Red flags that bump you down a tier

• No one on the team can name the current AI vendors in use.
• The main use case is "the CEO saw a demo."
• Legal has never reviewed an AI vendor.
• Data is spread across 4+ systems with no warehouse.
• Budget was assigned after the tools were bought.

The next 90 days at each tier

Ship Now

Pick 2 use cases. Assign owners. Commit budget and timeline. Measure baselines. Instrument cost, quality, latency. Ship behind feature flags at 10%. Expand on metrics.

Pilot

Pick 1 internal-only use case. Stand up cost tracking. Publish the AUP. Train champions. Run the pilot for 60 days. Re-score this assessment.

Foundation

Data audit. Policy draft. 2-3 champions trained. Tool inventory. Vendor-review process documented. No customer-facing AI yet. Re-score in 90 days.