| Check | Record |
|---|---|
| Task | Output needed, accountable owner and actions excluded |
| Sources | Representative records, permissions and update responsibility |
| Acceptance | Baseline, reviewed examples and rejected errors |
| Operation | Dependencies, monitoring, escalation and support owner |
| Decision | Remaining uncertainty and evidence needed for the next phase |
This qualitative table can be copied into a planning brief. It reports no survey findings or adoption rates.
Reviewed and updated October 8, 2026.
An industry's reported adoption rate does not tell you whether a particular AI workflow is ready. Start with the task, the evidence it uses and the people who must review its output. The table on this page is a qualitative planning aid, not an industry survey or success-rate chart.
Two organizations in the same industry can have different systems, access rules and operating capacity. Record the conditions of your workflow before borrowing another organization's example. A demonstration on public documents does not establish that an approach will work on restricted or incomplete records.
| Context | Illustrative workflow | Question to resolve before evaluation |
|---|---|---|
| Technology or professional services | Internal knowledge assistant | Are instructions current, source ownership clear and restricted documents excluded for unauthorized users? |
| Retail or manufacturing | Order, stock or service exception review | Which system defines the record, how are exceptions reconciled and who approves an action? |
| Healthcare administration | Administrative document or scheduling support | Which information may be used, which decisions require authorized staff and how are errors escalated? |
| Financial-services operations | Internal policy or service support | Can the output cite current approved material, follow permissions and preserve the required review record? |
| Public services, agriculture or distributed operations | Service information or field-work support | Will the workflow function with the available connectivity, source records and local support? |
These are illustrative questions, not claims about an industry's readiness or a recommendation to automate consequential decisions. The workflow's accountable owner must define acceptable use and review.
If the uncertainty is source quality, inspect representative records and test missing or outdated inputs. If it is integration, test the interface and recovery path. If it is review capacity, include the time needed to check and correct outputs. Record the baseline, failed cases, dependencies and operating owner alongside a successful demonstration.
Do not treat a provider feature or a peer's outcome as your own acceptance evidence. Compare the proposed workflow with the current process under agreed conditions before attributing an improvement to AI.
The production-gap field report labels what is live, demonstrated, built or planned. The retrieval proof report describes one documentation corpus and open evaluation work. These are useful implementation accounts, not industry adoption statistics.
Use the unscored readiness worksheet to document your next decision. For help scoping it, see AI roadmap and business-case planning, or request a project review with the workflow, information constraints and evidence you need.
