Your practical outcome
Create a small, safe and measurable pilot plan using Identify → Try → Pilot → Review → Scale. No coding is required to design the workflow.
Build your first safe agent pilot
- Identify: choose a repetitive, time-consuming, low-consequence task.
- Try: perform it manually with AI to understand the steps and missing information.
- Pilot: use a small test group, approved sample data and human review.
- Review: measure accuracy, usefulness, exceptions, time, cost and reviewer effort.
- Scale: expand only when evidence is strong and controls still fit the consequence.
Karthik’s order-status pilot
| Stage | What Karthik does | Evidence produced |
|---|---|---|
| Identify | Select repetitive status questions | Weekly volume and handling time |
| Try | Draft replies from sample records | Required fields and exceptions |
| Pilot | Use read-only access to a test source | Drafts, source links and escalations |
| Review | Compare drafts with verified status | Accuracy, time and reviewer effort |
| Scale | Add order types after success | New tests, permissions and approval |
The first version does not send messages or modify orders. It prepares a response and waits for review.
Define success before choosing a tool
Measure source-supported answers, escalation rate, preparation and review time, incorrect or duplicate actions, user satisfaction and operating cost. “The demo worked” is not a success measure.
Meena starts with an onboarding checklist
Meena chooses one outcome: prepare a checklist from an approved role template and confirmed employee details. The pilot flags missing data and creates a draft. Account creation and external messages stay behind approval.
Choose tools after mapping the workflow
You may test with a general AI workspace, an approved no-code builder or an agent feature already available in your organisation. Product capabilities change. Check current availability, privacy terms, controls and administrator approval before connecting business data.
Create your action plan
My workflow: [describe one repetitive task] Current owner: [person or team] Current volume and time: [baseline]
Create an Identify → Try → Pilot → Review → Scale plan with one measurable outcome, approved data, allowed and prohibited actions, human approval, five tests, success measures, stop conditions, owners and target dates. Keep the first pilot read-only or draft-only wherever possible.
Common mistakes
Common mistakes
- Buying a tool before mapping the workflow and baseline.
- Automating several processes at once.
- Testing only the happy path.
- Ignoring reviewer effort and business outcome.
- Scaling before access, ownership and recovery are clear.
- Treating market statistics as proof that your workflow will succeed.
Handbook completion
- An agent moves from answering toward bounded action.
- It works through a goal, plan, tool, observation and completion loop.
- Good use cases are repetitive, measurable and suitable for testing.
- Guardrails match permissions to consequence.
- Adoption begins with a small pilot and scales through evidence.
Key takeaways
Key takeaways
- Identify → Try → Pilot → Review → Scale is a practical path.
- Start with one measurable, low-consequence workflow.
- Use approved data and draft-only or read-only access first.
- Measure accuracy, time, escalation, reviewer effort and cost.
- Scale only when the pilot proves value and control.
Choose an answer, inspect the explanation and explain the idea in your own words.
What should happen before an AI-agent pilot is scaled?
Frequently asked questions
Which agent actions should normally require approval? Payments, external messages, deletions, permission changes and actions that are difficult to reverse should remain behind explicit approval.
Are activity logs enough to make an agent safe? No. Logs help investigation, but safety also requires least-privilege access, validation, limits, monitoring and stopping rules.
What should happen when the agent is uncertain? It should stop, explain what is missing and ask a person instead of inventing information or expanding its authority.