Stage 5 of 6 · V
Validate: Prove it before you scale it
Test value, quality, adoption, and risk rigorously, on a fully loaded cost basis, before committing to scale. A pilot earns expansion only when it performs in the real workflow against a defined pass line, with a kill switch in place.
- Managerial question
- Did it produce value, quality, adoption, and acceptable risk under real conditions?
- Related engagement
- The 90-Day AI-Native Programme
The diagnostic question
What is the pre-written pass line, and what specifically triggers the kill switch?
Validate closes a First Workflow Build and phase three of the 90-Day Programme. Evidence goes back to the same room that scored readiness on day 30.
Artefacts this stage produces
- The pilot charter
- Five sentences, signed by sponsor, operational owner, and risk lead.
- The fully loaded cost comparison
- Before and after, per unit of work, including review.
- The kill switch
- A pre-agreed stop condition, written before the pilot starts.
Done properly
- A five-sentence pilot charter is signed before a single user touches the tool: business problem, metric, baseline, quality bar, stop conditions.
- The hardest cases are deliberately sampled, not avoided.
- Cost is fully loaded, including review time at the reviewer's rate.
- The kill switch is written down and someone is empowered to pull it.
Commonly faked
- Success criteria written after the results came in.
- A demo on curated data described as a pilot.
- Adoption measured by licences issued rather than work completed.
- Cost stated as licence plus compute, with human review time excluded.
Audit checklist
Take these into your next leadership meeting
If the room cannot answer these without preparation, this stage has not been completed.
- 01What was the baseline, measured over what window?
- 02What is the quality bar, and who set it?
- 03What proportion of real cases fell outside the tested set?
- 04What does the workflow cost per unit, fully loaded, before and after?
- 05What condition stops this, and who has the authority to stop it?
Failure modes
How this stage goes wrong
- Declaring success on enthusiasm rather than on the pass line.
- Measuring the model and not the workflow.
- Running long enough to build sunk cost, then rationalising it.
Next step
Run Validate with us
Validate closes a First Workflow Build and phase three of the 90-Day Programme. Evidence goes back to the same room that scored readiness on day 30.