The Platform Decision Starts With the Work

The question

What work must an AI platform complete, and what evidence should a buying team collect before choosing one?

Who this is for

CIO, CDO and CAIO offices, enterprise architects, procurement teams and the business owners preparing a platform evaluation brief.

Three key takeaways

• Define the task and its boundaries. Specify the inputs, accepted output, permitted data and tools, and actions requiring human approval.
• Collect comparable evidence. Test realistic examples against the same quality criteria. Record elapsed time, failures, retries, human review and the full operating cost.
• Make the decision traceable. Keep the source, observation, date, owner and limitation attached to each finding. A documented capability is not the same as performance observed in your workflow.

Contents

The four-page framework covers task definition, authority, acceptance examples and an evidence register. Use it to prepare an evaluation brief before testing products. The separate Institute Quadrant provides the vendor exploration experience.

Publication status and date

Draft framework · October 2026. Working framework for review.

Evidence limitations

This document proposes an evaluation method. It contains no vendor rankings or measured product performance results.

Questions or corrections: info@iaitransform.com. Include the page title and supporting source.