# Two-week AI pilot plan

_This template operationalizes the AssociationAI tutorial "Run Your First AI Pilot on One Workflow in Two Weeks" (https://associationai.ai/posts/first-ai-pilot-one-workflow/). The tutorial owns the teaching — this is the method, made fill-in-the-blank._

## Your pilot

- **Workflow:** _[one task with a clear input and output — narrow, internal, repeats at least weekly]_
- **Owner (who runs it):** _[name and role]_
- **AI tool:** _[the tool your organization has approved, used under your AI policy]_
- **Start date:** _[date]_ — **Hard end date:** _[date — open-ended pilots quietly become permanent habits]_

## Week one: set up and run

1. **Pick one workflow.** Narrow means one task with a clear input and output. Internal means members never see the raw AI output.
   - Workflow chosen: _[fill in]_
2. **Baseline — how the workflow goes today, in your real numbers.** Without it, week two has nothing to compare.
   - Steps: _[fill in]_
   - Owner: _[fill in]_
   - Minutes per run: _[fill in]_
   - Editing passes per run: _[fill in]_
3. **Goal sentence:** _[what success looks like — e.g. "recap drafts need one editing pass instead of three"]_
   **Stop rule:** _[when you quit — write it now, while still neutral — e.g. "if a draft invents a quote or date, we stop"]_
4. **Run the workflow with AI help on real tasks.** A person reads every output before it goes anywhere. Use real work, not a demo; real tasks surface the problems controlled tests miss.
5. **Log each run** — what you asked, what came back, what you fixed. Keep it to five lines. One row per run in `measurement-log.csv`.

## Week two: measure and decide

6. **Compare the two weeks against your baseline.** Minutes and editing passes, before and after, side by side. Flat numbers are a finding, not a failure.
   - What improved: _[fill in]_
   - What declined: _[fill in]_
   - What stayed flat: _[fill in]_
7. **Count the costs, including the annoying ones.** Fixing outputs, reviewing, writing better prompts. A workflow that saves twenty minutes and creates thirty of cleanup is not a win.
   - Costs: _[fill in]_
8. **Make the call: keep it, change it, or stop it.** Check the result against the goal and stop rule from step 3. "Change it" counts — narrower input, a better prompt, a different human-check step. If the answer is stop, write one sentence saying why.
   - Decision: _[keep it / change it / stop it]_
   - Reason (one sentence): _[fill in]_
9. **Tell the team what you learned, in one page or less.** Share the baseline, result, and decision, and say where AI helped. An honest one-pager makes the next pilot easier to approve.
   - One-pager filed at: _[fill in]_
10. **File the log and the one-pager where the next pilot can find them.** Your filed pilot makes the second experiment cheaper than the first.
    - Filed at: _[fill in]_

## Check your result

Before you call the pilot done, confirm each of these in your log:

- [ ] The baseline numbers are written down from before the pilot started.
- [ ] Every run has a log entry with what was fixed.
- [ ] The week-two numbers are compared against the baseline.
- [ ] The costs you counted include fixing and review time.
- [ ] The decision is written in one sentence with the reason.
- [ ] The one-page report exists and is filed where others can find it.

## Mistakes that sink a two-week pilot

- **Picking a workflow that is really five workflows.** "Handle member email" is not one workflow; "draft first replies to dues-renewal questions" is. If step 1 took more than ten minutes, narrow it further.
- **Skipping the baseline.** A baseline written from memory in week two flatters the pilot. Document your starting numbers up front, with the same discipline you will apply to the results.
- **Letting the pilot sprawl past its dates.** Set a hard end date: open-ended pilots quietly become permanent habits. Step 8 happens on schedule even if the data feels thin.
- **Treating "stop" as failure.** Sometimes the right tool is no AI at all. A pilot that proves a workflow should stay human is a successful pilot.