The Enterprise AI Readiness Self-Check

Is there a named executive sponsor who owns the outcome — not just the budget?

A sponsor who can unblock a data-access fight or a procurement freeze is worth more than the model.

Is the first use case tied to a metric someone already reports on?

"Reduce handle time," "recover abandoned carts," "cut Rx leakage" beat "explore AI."

Can you name the internal champion who will use the thing every day?

Pilots without a daily user are demos.

Do you know where the data lives, who owns it, and whether you're allowed to use it for this?

Data readiness is the single most-cited cause of AI failure — access rights and data lineage block pilots more often than data volume.

Is the data good enough to be wrong about in production?

You need documented failure modes and edge cases before customers discover them for you.

Is there someone on the team who can tell a good output from a plausible-but-wrong one?

Domain experts who evaluate model outputs daily matter more than generic accuracy dashboards.

Do the people around the system — support, ops, compliance — understand what it can and can't do?

Operations teams need explicit playbooks for model hallucinations before the first customer ticket arrives.

Can the system reach the systems it needs to — read and write, by role?

Production requires writing records back to CRM/ERP systems, triggering workflows, and enforcing RBAC.

Is there a path to monitor it in production — latency, cost, drift, and a way to roll back?

If you can't see it degrade, you can't keep it alive.

Have you classified this system under the EU AI Act?

The four risk tiers decide your obligations. The Act applies since August 2026; high-risk duties land 2 December 2027 (Annex III) — classification now is what makes that date cheap.

Is there human oversight built into the core architecture?

Someone must be able to understand, override, and detect anomalies — by design.

Do you have one accountable owner for AI governance?

A named individual, rather than a quarterly committee.