AI Pilot Charter Template
AI pilots drift when nobody wrote down what success means. A two-page charter fixes scope, evidence and stop rules before the first prompt is written.
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AI Pilot Charter Template
ERP Purchasing Assistant Pilot: Pilot Charter
Company: Acme Precision Components Ltd Pilot period: 2026-11-09 to 2026-12-18 Executive sponsor: VP Operations Business owner: Purchasing Manager Technical lead: ERP Systems Lead
1. Problem and objective
Buyers spend about two hours a day exporting open PO lines and checking delivery dates across screens and spreadsheets, which delays supplier follow-up.
Objective: prove, within the pilot period and budget, whether an AI assistant can deliver the primary success metric below without unacceptable risk, so that a go or no-go decision on wider rollout can be made on evidence.
2. Scope
In scope: Read-only natural language questions on open purchase orders, receipts and supplier delivery performance for 12 buyers in one site.
Out of scope: Any write-back to ERP, supplier-facing communication sent without review, and other modules.
Hosting: On-premises GPU server.
3. Success criteria
Primary metric: Buyer time on PO status lookups reduced by at least 40 percent
Accuracy threshold: At least 90 percent of 100 test questions answered correctly with the supporting query shown
Additional measures: weekly active users among pilot participants, user satisfaction score, share of answers with a verifiable source, and average response time.
4. Data and access
Data sources, access method, ERP role mapping and any data excluded from the pilot are listed below. The pilot uses read-only credentials and respects ERP roles. No production data leaves the approved environment.
| Source | Access method | Owner | Restrictions |
|---|---|---|---|
| ERP purchasing tables | Read-only service account | ERP lead | No supplier banking data |
| Supplier delivery history | Reporting view | Purchasing manager | |
5. Risks and mitigations
| Risk | Likelihood | Impact | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Incorrect answers trusted by users | Medium | High | Show source query, test set, user training |
| Data exposure beyond role | Low | High | ERP role trimming, access test before launch |
| Low adoption | Medium | Medium | Weekly feedback, champion buyer |
| Cost overrun | Low | Medium | Fixed budget, weekly spend review |
6. Milestones
| Milestone | Target date | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Kickoff and access granted | ERP Systems Lead | |
| Test question set approved | Purchasing Manager | |
| First users onboarded | ERP Systems Lead | |
| Mid-pilot review | VP Operations | |
| Final evaluation and decision | 2026-12-18 | VP Operations |
7. Budget and resources
Approved budget: $25,000 including infrastructure and effort. Resource commitments from the business owner, the ERP team and security are agreed before kickoff. Spend is reviewed weekly against the budget.
8. Stop and exit rules
The pilot stops early if a data exposure incident occurs, if accuracy remains below half the threshold after two tuning cycles, or if the budget is exhausted. At the end, the decision options are: stop, extend with changed scope, or move to production planning.
Approvals
Edit the sample risks, data sources and milestones to match your pilot. Keep scope narrow, set the accuracy test before the build starts, and record the baseline for your success metric before the first user logs in.
Scope your pilot with us
Share your draft charter and we will comment on scope, data access and the success metrics before you start.
Optional. The tool and every export work without this. No spam.
How to use the charter
Complete the fields with the sponsor and business owner in the same meeting, then export to Word. Be strict with the in-scope statement: one team, one site, one question type. Write the success metric with a number and a baseline, such as minutes per lookup measured before the pilot. Set the accuracy test before development, using real questions from users and answers checked by the business owner.
What a good charter includes
A useful pilot charter has eight parts: problem, scope, success criteria, data and access, risks, milestones, budget and exit rules. The data section matters most in ERP work because it states which tables or documents the assistant sees and which role it runs as. The exit rules prevent the common failure of a pilot that never ends and never decides. Name who makes the go or no-go decision and by what date.
- One primary metric, plus two or three supporting measures
- Baseline measured before the pilot starts
- Read-only access unless a specific write step is approved
- A defined stop rule for data exposure and for poor accuracy
Running the pilot
Hold a weekly review of usage, accuracy on the test set and cost. Collect failed questions, since they show whether the problem is data, retrieval or the model. Resist adding features mid-pilot. At the end, compare results with the charter and not with the demo: if the metric was missed, decide whether the cause is fixable within a changed scope, or whether the use case should be dropped.
Common mistakes
The most frequent mistakes are unmeasured baselines, a scope that grows every week, and a sponsor who only sees demos. Another is choosing success measures that cannot fail, such as user enthusiasm. Finally, plan production early: security review, hosting, support ownership and licensing differ from a pilot, and discovering them after a successful pilot wastes the momentum.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should an AI pilot last?
Four to eight weeks is typical. Shorter pilots rarely collect enough usage data, and longer ones tend to expand in scope. Fix the end date in the charter and decide at that date.
Who signs the charter?
The executive sponsor, the business owner, the technical lead and information security. If the pilot touches regulated or export-controlled data, add compliance or the export control officer.
What accuracy should we require?
It depends on the use case. For read-only lookups with the source shown, 90 percent on a real test set is a common bar. Anything that influences product conformity or financial postings needs a higher bar and human review.
Should the pilot use real data?
Usually yes, since synthetic data hides the messy parts of an ERP. Use read-only access, role trimming and an approved environment, and exclude data classes the policy restricts.
If you want help running a read-only pilot against your ERP with the evidence the charter asks for, we can scope one with you.
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