The aim is to select a workflow you can evaluate. A convincing demonstration is not enough.
Start with the work, not the tool
Ask a project manager, field supervisor and office administrator to describe a task that routinely requires them to find, copy, compare or reconstruct information. Pick one workflow and follow it from input to completed output.
Write down where the information lives, who supplies it, who checks it and what happens when something is missing. If the process cannot be explained without several exceptions, record those exceptions. They are part of the work.
Use five questions to choose a candidate
- Does it repeat often enough to measure? An unusual task may be important, but it gives you fewer opportunities to learn.
- Are the inputs available and usable? A tool cannot reliably reconstruct facts that were never recorded.
- Can a reviewer verify the output against a source? A useful draft should make checking easier.
- Can an error be caught before it affects a customer, payment or project commitment?
- Is there enough potential benefit after review, corrections and operating costs?
Do not turn this into an impressive-looking score that hides a missing requirement. If there is no accountable reviewer or no usable evidence, that is a reason to pause.
Three candidates worth examining
Daily-report preparation. Draft a summary from existing notes, with links to the originals. Check omitted events, project identifiers and unsupported statements before sharing.
Document completeness checks. Compare a package against an agreed checklist and flag missing items. A person confirms whether the flagged item is actually required and whether another record satisfies it.
Change-event evidence assembly. Gather dated records for a project manager to review. Keep the source references and distinguish a potential change from an approved change.
These are possible experiments, not claims that a particular product will handle your records accurately.
Choose a task to leave alone
For the first pilot, keep pricing approval, contract commitments and safety decisions with the responsible people. An AI-generated summary can support review without becoming the authority for the decision.
Sometimes a simpler improvement wins: a required field, a shared template, a clearer owner or a scheduled review. Compare that option before adding another system.
Write a one-page pilot brief
Record the workflow, owner, sample, baseline time, acceptable output, review method, operating cost and stop conditions. Include ordinary cases and difficult cases. Judge the pilot by completed work that meets the quality requirement.
If the only success measure is how quickly the tool generates text, the brief is incomplete.