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Build a Scalable AI Deployment Plan

Your implementation and scaling plan is about more than just technology.

The shift from small-sized AI adoption to complex, broad AI implementations brings new challenges and barriers to your organization:

  • Stakeholders are oversold on the expectations of AI and propose aggressive initiatives that are costly, risky, or impractical.
  • There is little motivation or tolerance to change existing business operations or enterprise systems to see the full value of AI.
  • Teams are ill equipped to meet the demands and complexities of scaled AI implementations.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Position your AI deployment plan as a collectively owned and managed artifact focused on sharing, enabling, and continuously improving. AI requires various roles, capabilities, and technologies to harmoniously work together to gain the outcomes your stakeholders expect to see. Everyone needs to participate in the planning to ensure all perspectives are accommodated in the solution design and the right support is in place.

Impact and Result

Build a scalable deployment plan for your AI initiatives by following Info-Tech’s guided approach:

  • Identify and build an implementation plan, including a roadmap and high-level backlog, for a single high‑priority initiative.
  • Identify the gaps in your ability to execute on an AI‑focused plan.
  • Identify and prioritize your AI scaling initiatives to support your deployment of AI at scale.
  • For an example initiative, break down the cost of implementation and maintenance.

Build a Scalable AI Deployment Plan Research & Tools

1. Build a Scalable AI Deployment Plan Deck – A step-by-step document that walks you through how to properly align on a plan to scale AI initiatives enterprise-wide.

This document outlines how to build an AI deployment plan, identify gaps in your ability to execute, and prioritize the right initiatives to support your overall scaling goals.

2. AI Deployment Plan Report Template – Finalize a report for your leadership on what your AI implementation and scaling plan can look like.

This report covers the following areas:

  • AI Initiative Implementation Plan
  • AI Maturity and Capability Assessment
  • AI Practices Improvement Plan

3. AI Execution Capability Assessment Tool – A structured tool to help you understand the current view of your ability to execute on AI initiatives.

This tool will help you analyze your organization's foundational AI capabilities and identify the areas that most need attention.


Workshop: Build a Scalable AI Deployment Plan

Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

Module 1: Build an Actionable Implementation Plan

The Purpose

Align on an implementation plan for one of your AI initiatives.

Key Benefits Achieved

An actionable implementation plan for an AI initiative.

Activities

Outputs

1.1

Conduct a retrospective.

1.2

Discuss the future role of AI.

1.3

Select your initiative.

1.4

Build your use case models.

1.5

Design your AI-enabled process.

1.6

Assess your system and data flow.

  • High-level AI solution design
1.7

Build your AI initiative backlog and roadmap.

  • AI initiative backlog and roadmap
1.8

Create your AI initiative one-pager.

  • AI initiative one-pager

Module 2: Assess the Gaps in Your AI Execution Capabilities

The Purpose

Align on the challenges your organization will face in implementing your AI initiatives.

Key Benefits Achieved

A prioritized view of what is (and isn’t) important when it comes to implementing your given AI initiatives.

Activities

Outputs

2.1

Assess your AI maturity.

  • AI maturity assessment and heatmap
2.2

Assess your AI execution capabilities.

  • Gap analysis for foundational AI execution capabilities

Module 3: Define Your AI Scaling Initiatives

The Purpose

Define the activities that are required to effectively scale your AI initiatives in the future.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Identify the activities that will help close your AI execution gaps. This will subsequently enable you to roll out your AI initiatives in the future.

Activities

Outputs

3.1

Brainstorm solutions to fill your gaps.

3.2

Backlog and roadmap your AI execution capability initiatives.

3.3

Complete your AI capability one-pager.

  • Initiative roadmap for implementing and supporting AI at scale.

Module 4: Develop Your AI Cost Breakdown

The Purpose

Understand the costs involved in scaling your AI initiatives.

Key Benefits Achieved

A view of the costs required to scale your AI initiatives. This will potentially influence the order and cadence in your AI implementation plan.

Activities

Outputs

4.1

List the cost factors of your AI initiative.

4.2

List the cost factors involved in improving your execution capability.

4.3

(Optional) Complete a detailed cost analysis.

  • List of cost factors of an AI initiative and involved in your AI execution capability improvements

Build a Scalable AI Deployment Plan

Your implementation and scaling plan is about more than just technology.

Analyst Perspective

Your implementation and scaling plan is about more than just technology!

Aggressively scaling artificial intelligence (AI) with the latest concepts and leading-edge technologies is an attractive ambition for many organizations. However, rolling out AI as quickly and as broadly as possible often comes with costs that outweigh the benefits and may introduce cultural, security, and business operational risks and changes for which the stakeholders have no appetite. The lagging development of a good AI practice can further hamper the future returns of today's investments.

Start small with the intent to learn and scale. The right AI initiative helps you learn the new AI technologies, their measurable impacts, and how they benefit your teams while allowing your team to establish good foundational capabilities and build the necessary relationships and collaborations for you to be successful. These factors will then allow you to explore more sophisticated, complicated, and innovative opportunities to drive new value to your team, department, and organization.

Andrew Kum-Seun

Andrew Kum-Seun
Research Director,
Application Delivery & Management
Info-Tech Research Group

Bhavya Vora

Bhavya Vora
Research Analyst,
Special Projects
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

  • AI adoption has gained significant momentum as your business leaders see the positive outcomes in your proofs-of-concept and pilot projects, such as improved operational efficiencies, cost optimizations, and higher output quality.
  • Your stakeholders are ready to increase their investments in more AI solutions. They want to scale their initial success to other business and IT functions and technologies.
  • An implementation plan is needed to ensure the right projects are defined and prioritized to meet the AI initiative goals and the required execution capabilities are in place to support AI growth.

Common Obstacles

  • The shift from small-sized AI adoption to complex, broad AI implementations brings new challenges and barriers to your organization:
  • Stakeholders are oversold on the expectations of AI and propose aggressive initiatives that are costly, risky, or impractical.
  • There is little motivation or tolerance to change existing business operations or enterprise systems to see the full value of AI.
  • Teams are ill equipped to meet the demands and complexities of scaled AI implementations.

Info-Tech's Approach

  • Build a scalable deployment plan for your AI initiatives by following Info-Tech's guided approach:
  • Identify and build an implementation plan, including a roadmap and high-level backlog, for a single high‑priority initiative.
  • Identify the gaps in your ability to execute on an AI‑focused plan.
  • Identify and prioritize your AI scaling initiatives to support your deployment of AI at scale.
  • For an example initiative, break down the cost of implementation and maintenance.
  • Repeat the practices in this research for other AI initiatives.

Blueprint Insight Summary

Overarching Info-Tech Insight

Position your AI deployment plan as a collectively owned and managed artifact focused on sharing, enabling, and continuously improving. AI requires various roles, capabilities, and technologies to harmoniously work together to gain the outcomes your stakeholders expect to see. Everyone needs to participate in the planning to ensure all perspectives are accommodated in the solution design and the right support is in place.

Phase 1

Treat AI like any other enterprise technology. Implementing AI involves understanding more than just how it impacts the users, customers, and bottom line. You need to know how these improvements meet risk and change appetites and tolerances, how AI impacts enterprise data and systems, and how outputs drive both financial and non-financial business priorities.

Phase 2

Mature your practice as you scale your AI technologies. Good skills, resources, and governance and management practices are critical for the successful scaling of AI tools and technologies. AI is not a set-it-and-forget-it asset; it needs to be delivered with quality in mind and continuously monitored, reviewed, and maintained.

Phase 3

Implement AI with the future in mind. AI motivates the implementation, modernization, and enhancement of key tools and technologies to maximize the return on those investments. The resulting technology governance and management practices act as building blocks in your organization. We must expect that more AI and other enabling technologies will be implemented using earlier investments.

Phase 4

View AI costs as organic. AI is designed to continuously consume information and resources so that it can grow and improve over time. It has a lot of moving parts (e.g. AI model, data integrations), each of which requires specific care and feeding, complicating set up and management.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

“Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

Guided Implementation

“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

Workshop

“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

Consulting

“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Info-Tech's methodology to Build a Scalable AI Deployment Plan

1. Build an Actionable Implementation Plan

2. Assess the Gaps in Your AI Execution Capabilities

3. Define Your AI Scaling Initiatives

4. Develop Your AI Cost Breakdown

Phase Steps

1.1 Conduct a Retrospective on Previous AI Initiatives

1.2 Discuss the Future Role of AI

1.3 Select Your Initiative

1.4 Build Your Use-Case Models

1.5 Design Your AI-Enabled Process

1.6 Assess Your System and Data Flow

1.7 Build Your AI Initiative Backlog and Roadmap

1.8 Create Your AI Initiative One-Pager

2.1 Assess Your AI Maturity

2.2 Assess Your AI Execution Capabilities

3.1 Brainstorm Solutions to Fill Gaps

3.2 Backlog and Roadmap Your AI Execution Capability Improvement Plan

3.3 Complete Your AI Capability One-Pager

4.1 List the Cost Factors of Your AI Initiative

4.2 List the Cost Factors Involved in Improving Your Execution Capability

4.3 (Optional) Complete a Detailed Cost Analysis

Phase Outcomes

High-level AI solution design

AI initiative backlog and roadmap

AI initiative one-pager

AI maturity assessment

Gap analysis for foundational AI execution capabilities

Initiative roadmap for implementing and supporting AI at scale

List of cost factors involved in your AI initiative and in your AI execution capability improvements

Note: The goal of this research is to complete a scalable deployment plan for one AI initiative with the intent that the tools, tactics, and techniques be repeated for other initiatives.

Your deliverables

Leverage these supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals.

AI Deployment Plan Report Template

AI Deployment Plan Report Template

Finalize a report for your leadership on what your AI implementation and scaling plan can look like.

AI Execution Capability Assessment Tool

AI Execution Capability Assessment Tool

This tool will help you analyze your organization's foundational AI capabilities and identify the areas that most need attention.

Workshop Schedule: Build a Scalable AI Deployment Plan

Pre-Workshop

Module 1

Module 1

Module 1

Module 1

Post-Workshop

Understand Your AI Strategy and Pilot AI

Build an Actionable Implementation Plan

Assess the Gaps in Your AI Execution Capabilities

Define Your AI Scaling Initiatives

Develop Your AI Cost Breakdown

Set Next Steps and Wrap-Up

Attendees
  • CIO and direct reports
  • AI leaders and teams
  • Business representatives related to the AI initiative
  • CIO and direct reports
  • AI leaders and teams
  • Business representatives related to the AI initiative
  • AI leaders and teams
  • AI leaders and teams
  • AI leaders and teams
  • Business representatives related to the AI initiative
  • CIO and direct reports
  • AI leaders and teams

Activities

  • Review your AI strategy, including your AI vision and goals, one-pagers, and prioritized list of AI initiatives.
  • Survey your AI teams to gauge their AI maturity and the state of their execution capability.
  • Gather the roles who have experience with AI.
  • Review past experiences with AI and discuss how they shape AI's future in your organization.
  • Select one AI initiative and evaluate the scope, risk, and value from multiple perspectives.
  • Build a backlog and roadmap of projects for this initiative.
  • Create your AI initiative one-pager.
  • Perform an AI maturity assessment and understand the root cause of critical gaps.
  • Conduct a current state assessment of AI execution capabilities.
  • Brainstorm root causes for capability gaps and inefficiencies.
  • Identify and prioritize the improvement plan needed to develop or optimize critical AI execution capabilities.
  • Develop a roadmap to build enabling AI execution capabilities.
  • Develop capability improvement one-pagers for selected initiatives.
  • Break down the cost of implementing one key AI initiative.
  • Break down the cost of building and optimizing the AI execution capabilities.
  • Complete the workshop deliverable using the exercises from the previous four days.
  • Repeat tactics used in this workshop for other AI initiatives.
  • Set follow-up engagements with Info-Tech analysts.
Outcomes
  • Documented AI strategy
  • Completed AI maturity survey
  • Completed AI execution capability assessment
  • High-level AI solution design
  • AI initiative backlog and roadmap
  • AI initiative one-pager
  • AI maturity assessment
  • Gap analysis for foundational AI execution capabilities
  • Capability improvement roadmap for implementing and supporting AI at scale.
  • List of cost factors for your AI initiative and AI execution capability improvements
  • Workshop outcome document and Info-Tech observations and perspectives
  • List of next-step Info-Tech engagements

Note: The goal of this workshop is to complete a scalable deployment plan for one AI initiative with the intent that the tools, tactics, and techniques be repeated for other initiatives.

0.1 What do we want to accomplish?

1 hour

  1. Write what you want to accomplish by maturing and scaling your AI capabilities using a practice user story.

As a [your role] I want [what you need] so that [how this will help you succeed]

Input

  • N/A

Output

  • Desired outcome of expanding AI adoption

Materials

  • Whiteboard/flip charts

Participants

  • CIO and direct reports
  • AI leaders and teams
  • Business representatives related to the AI initiative

Deploy AI at scale

Deploying at scale requires careful consideration of several different elements.

1. AI Solution Design

Deconstructing the AI initiative into granular steps – building use case models, charting system, data, and process flows – simplifies the initiative, lays the groundwork for clarity, and accelerates AI integration across business functions.

2. AI Capabilities

Establishing a frugal AI mindset helps prioritize actionable progress over perfection. Concentrate on leveraging existing strengths and making strategic improvements to gaps to scale AI.

3. Roadmap and Backlog

Crafting a roadmap and maintaining a prioritized backlog of AI initiatives serve as a strategic compass, guiding phased deployment of AI. Estimate and prioritize the backlog of initiatives, assessing degree of effort and value.

4. AI Budget

Quantify the impact of scaling the initiative by conducting T-shirt sizing estimations to evaluate cost factors against the backdrop of risk and value potential.

Info-Tech Insight

Position your AI deployment plan as a collectively owned and managed artifact focused on sharing, enabling, and continuously improving. AI requires various roles, capabilities, and technologies to harmoniously work together to gain the outcomes your stakeholders expect to see. Everyone needs to participate in the planning to ensure all perspectives are accommodated in the solution design and the right support is in place.

Phase 1

Build an Actionable Implementation Plan

Build on your early AI success

Notable initial benefits:

QUALITY

Create high-value and high-quality outputs consistently, and proactively identify and address issues before they occur.

TIME SAVED

Reduce the time spent by employees on completing manual, repetitive, and error-prone work.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Improve the customer experience with a product or service via reliability, engagement, transparency, etc.

PRODUCT GROWTH

Expand the key products and services to ultimately drive revenue expansion or customer impact.

Can we gain more from AI?

As industries evolve and adopt more tools and technologies, their business operating models become more complex. Task-based and desktop-based AI are often not enough. More sophisticated and scaled AI is needed to simplify and streamline complex operations from end to end and align them with organizational goals.

1.1 Conduct a retrospective on previous AI initiatives

1 hour

  1. Discuss the lessons learned from your previous AI initiatives, pilots, and experiences:
    • Start – What should we start doing for future AI initiatives?
    • Stop – What should we stop doing in future AI initiatives?
    • Continue – What should we continue doing in future AI initiatives?
  2. Document the results of this exercise in the AI Deployment Plan Report Template.

Download the AI Deployment Plan Report Template

Input

  • Experiences from past AI projects and implementations

Output

  • Lessons learned from past AI projects and implementations

Materials

  • Whiteboard/flip charts
  • AI Deployment Plan Report Template

Participants

  • CIO and direct reports
  • AI leaders and teams
  • Business representatives related to the AI initiative

Why do we want to broadly leverage AI?

The business needs AI to be successful

"94% of business leaders surveyed agree that AI is critical to success over the next five years" (Deloitte, 2022; N=2,630).

Maintain the momentum from early successes

Lowering costs, discovering valuable insights, and improving collaboration across business functions or organizations were the top three AI outcomes that were achieved to a high degree (Deloitte, 2022, N=2,630).

AI is becoming the way of working

"Seventy-nine percent of all respondents say they've had at least some exposure to [generative] AI, either for work or outside of work, and 22 percent say they are regularly using it in their own work" (N=1,684, McKinsey, 2023).

Peers and competitors are investing in AI

"In fiscal year 2022, U.S. government agencies allocated $1.7 billion to AI R&D, up 13% from the year prior and an increase of 209% from 2018" (Stanford Institute, 2023).

Enterprise AI adoption requires significant top-to-bottom investments

Expanding AI adoptions requires organization-wide investments, such as:

  • A unified, open analytics platform that can handle large and complex data, support various data processing and analysis models, and enable fast and reliable deployment and management of AI solutions.
  • A flexible, cost-efficient, and scalable data management architecture (e.g. data lakehouse, which combines the best features of data warehouses and data lakes), to provide a single source of truth for data, analytics, and AI.
  • Privacy-preserving computing techniques, such as fully homomorphic encryption and differential privacy, to protect sensitive data while allowing computation and collaboration across organizations.
  • A practice that has the competencies, influence, and empowerment to address dependencies and conflicts across the organization's functional groups.

1.2 Discuss the future role of AI

0.5 hours

  1. Discuss how you envision the role of AI has evolved since your earlier pilots and proofs-of-concept. Ask yourself the following questions:
    • How can AI complement and augment employees and externally facing products and services?
    • What are the broad outcomes we want from AI?
    • What is the familiarity with and reception of AI across the organization?
    • What are your peers and competitors doing with AI?
    • What are the policies, restrictions, and regulations that are constraining AI adoption and implementation?
  2. Document the results of this exercise in the AI Deployment Plan Report Template.

Download the AI Deployment Plan Report Template

Input

  • Lessons learned from past AI projects and implementations

Output

  • The organization's perspective on the future role of AI

Materials

  • Whiteboard/flip charts
  • AI Deployment Plan Report Template

Participants

  • CIO and direct reports
  • AI leaders and teams
  • Business representatives related to the AI initiative

Define an effective AI deployment plan using your AI strategy

1. AI Mission & Vision

Statements that describe the future achievements and promise of AI and articulate what IT does to achieve the vision.

2. AI Principles

Core values, thinking, and boundaries that guide the analysis, perspectives, decisions, and approaches of AI and the target-state design.

3. Strategic Goals and Priorities

Specific corporate financial and non-financial priorities that the organization aims to achieve.

4. AI Objectives and Metrics

Practical, achievable, and measurable expectations of AI initiatives.

See our AI Strategy Presentation Template to get started in building your AI strategy

Establish a repeatable planning process by focusing on one AI initiative

See our AI Strategy Presentation Template to build your backlog of AI initiatives

Gain these key lessons from your first AI initiative:

Verification & Validation

Test the fit of AI capabilities, organizational acceptance, and IT's readiness to support AI.

Foundations

Establish a foundational practice to support future scaling and accommodate continuous learning.

Justification

Rationalize the return on your AI investments and make the case for further AI adoption and innovation.

Prioritize the initiatives that support your business goals

Example:

An image of an example of a repetable planning process focused on one AI initiative.

1.3 Select your initiative

0.5 hours

  1. Review your backlog of prioritized AI initiatives. If available, refer to your AI strategy document.
  2. Select the initiative to begin your AI journey. Consider the following in your selection:
    • Feasibility – Do you currently have the capabilities to deliver on this opportunity? Do you have the right partners, resources, or technology?
    • Desirability – Is this opportunity a change the stakeholder needs? Does it solve a known pain point?
    • Viability – Does this initiative have an impact on the business value drivers of the organization? Is it a profitable and productive opportunity that will support the business model? Will this opportunity require a complex cost structure?
  3. Document the results of this exercise in the AI Deployment Plan Report Template.

Download the AI Deployment Plan Report Template

Input

  • Backlog of AI initiatives
  • AI strategy

Output

  • Selection of AI initiative to be the focus of this plan

Materials

  • Whiteboard/flip charts
  • AI Deployment Plan Report Template

Participants

  • CIO and direct reports
  • AI leaders and teams
  • Business representatives related to the AI initiative

Reveal the risk and challenges of your initiative through multiple perspectives

Decompose your AI initiatives into smaller deliverable increments. This activity reveals the underlying complexity of the initiative and gives greater confidence in what can be reasonably delivered against defined milestones or timelines.

Use Case Models

Understand the interactions between the system and human users. This helps understand how AI can interact with related systems.

Business Process Flows

Describe the series of steps a person follows to generate the desired outcome. Here, we see how AI changes how employees operate.

System and Data Flow Diagrams

See how business applications, data, and third-party services support and are impacted by the use of AI.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

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Authors

Andrew Kum-Seun

Bhavya Vora

Search Code: 103576
Last Revised: February 6, 2024

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