# What an AI opportunity review should decide

> The decisions an AI opportunity review should produce before anyone funds a pilot or buys another tool.

## What is an AI opportunity review for?

An opportunity review is not a tool demo and not a strategy deck. It decides whether a specific workflow should be automated, prepared, or left alone. The output is a decision a founder or operations leader can fund, defer, or decline.

## Which questions does the review have to answer?

If these are still open, the review is not finished:

1. **Which workflow?** Name the work, the role that does it, and how often it happens.
2. **What does it cost now?** Time, delay, rework, or a decision that waits on a person.
3. **Where do the inputs live?** The systems of record, not a sample file prepared for the meeting.
4. **What happens when the output is wrong?** Who reviews it, and what the customer or the record looks like if nobody does.
5. **What will you measure in 90 days?** One baseline, not a list of possible benefits.

A workflow with no baseline is a pilot that cannot succeed or fail. It can only continue.

## What are the three legitimate outcomes?

- **Build or integrate.** The workflow is clear, the data is reachable, and a person is accountable for the result.
- **Prepare.** The value is real, but the process, the data, or the owner is not ready. Preparation is the project.
- **Leave it.** The work is rare, the risk of a wrong output is high, or a simpler change in the existing system would do more.

Leaving a workflow alone is a successful review. It saves the budget for the one that should move.

## What should you refuse to start with?

Refuse a catalogue of use cases with no rank. Refuse a pilot whose success is "the team liked the demo." Refuse an AI step on top of a spreadsheet that is still the only system of record, unless fixing that system is part of the same plan.

## Checklist

- [ ] One workflow named
- [ ] Current cost or delay written down
- [ ] Systems of record identified
- [ ] Human review point named where a wrong output matters
- [ ] One of three outcomes chosen: build, prepare, or leave it
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