# AI pilot value scorecard

Define the unit of accepted work and its quality threshold before the pilot. Record every attempt, including rejected, blocked, abandoned, and pending work. The [research companion guide](/guides/acceptance-review) includes an editable CSV log, measurement rules, and a fictional worked example.

**Task / intended use / reviewer:** ____________________

**Who measures, and whether they are independent of the people who built or sponsor the workflow:** ____________________

**Baseline period and how the manual condition was observed (same people, same period, same task mix):** ____________________

**Minimum tasks and duration agreed before the pilot, and the reason:** ____________________

**Acceptance criteria:** ____________________

**Sample selection / comparison method / known biases:** ____________________

| Task / attempt / configuration IDs | Method | Preparation minutes | Production minutes | Supervision minutes | Review minutes | Correction minutes | Recovery minutes | Attempt state | Elapsed minutes | Service cost / currency / status |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  | Manual |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  | Assisted |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |

**Human effort** = preparation + production/prompting + supervision + review + correction + recovery person-minutes across all attempts. Count each person's interval once. Record unattended machine wait separately.

**Accepted tasks** = unique task IDs within each condition with a verified accepted result. A retry can yield one accepted task, never two. Distinguish this from accepted-attempt rate, whose denominator includes every attempt in that condition.

**Task elapsed time** runs from the first attempt's start to final verification, including gaps. It is not the sum of attempt durations. Record the final artifact and verification evidence.

**Cost per accepted task** includes all attempt costs and any stated labor/setup allocation. Unknown cost makes the total incomplete; zero accepted tasks makes the ratio undefined. Numeric blanks mean unmeasured, not zero.

## Operating view

**Setup / evaluation effort:** ____________________

**Maintenance and support estimate / period:** ____________________

**Newly attempted work, tracked separately:** ____________________

**Quality findings and unresolved exceptions:** ____________________

| Defect type (wrong fact, missing item, wrong scope, formatting, policy breach, other) | Count | Caught by review or after acceptance | Consequence | Fix or accepted |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  |  |  |  |  |

**Feedback from people who received or depended on the output:** ____________________

**Risk events during the pilot (data placed where it should not be, action taken without approval, provider outage) and their handling:** ____________________

**Cost per accepted task trend across the pilot, and what drove the change:** ____________________

**Follow-up date / completed or missing / delayed defects:** ____________________

**Retained-understanding exercise / result or not observed:** ____________________

**Recommendation:** expand / redesign / gather more evidence / stop

**Approval / permitted scope / approver / date:** ____________________

**Execution status / independent verification / evidence:** ____________________

**Supported scope / limitations / owner / next review:** ____________________

## Common failure modes

- Only successful attempts are logged, so the accepted-attempt rate looks better than it was.
- Review time is counted for the pilot but not for the manual baseline.
- Enthusiastic early users are compared with the whole team's ordinary output.
- Savings are projected from a week of pilot data and never re-measured.

This scorecard measures effort, acceptance, and cost for one task. It does not establish that the workflow is safe to release; use the AI workflow release review for that.