Setting Acceptance Criteria Before Testing an AI Automation Pilot

A pilot is easier to judge when the team agrees in advance on what it must accomplish, since a demo can appear successful while skipping exceptions or relying on unrealistic data. The guidance recommends testing one bounded process, with metrics chosen to fit that specific work, such as routing accuracy, review volume, or recovery after a failed integration. Teams should document the trigger, inputs, systems, expected outputs, and which actions remain manual, and name an owner who can resolve policy or approval questions. Test cases should include ordinary examples as well as missing fields, duplicates, outages, and ambiguous inputs, using sanitized data and settled rules for correct results. Finally, the pilot should define baselines, cost factors, a threshold that pauses testing, and an owner responsible for alerts and changes after the test ends.