Field notes5 min readJun 8, 2026
Why your AI pilot died in Q3.
A 12-month roadmap is where AI projects go to die. Ship one narrow flow, in production, in 3 weeks, or don't start.
By Pulse Studio
The 90-slide deck problem.
Enterprise AI pilots almost always start the same way, a strategy deck, a steering committee, a vendor bake-off, and a demo environment. Six months later, no one has used the thing in production.
What we do instead.
Pick one workflow with a measurable baseline. Ship a version that beats the baseline. Put it in front of one real user. Iterate weekly. If it hasn't beaten the baseline in 6 weeks, kill it and try another workflow.
Guardrails are the product.
Evals, retrieval hygiene, and audit trails aren't polish, they're the reason the pilot survives contact with your legal and IT teams. Build them week one.