AI Use Case Readiness Toolkit

Purpose: Define and stress test a proposed AI use case, covering the problem, the objective, the solution design, feasibility, and business value, before any investment, build, or governance approval.

This Template helps you produce:

• A clearly scoped business problem and AI objective, written as a simple action and outcome statement.

• A working picture of how the system runs day to day, who's using it, what the AI is actually doing at each step, and exactly where a person needs to step in.

• A feasibility review covering technical, fairness, and privacy or compliance risk, with thresholds and mitigation steps.

Example Use Case: A product team wants to launch an AI tool that ranks customer support tickets by urgency. Before asking for budget, they use the Solution Brief to define the AI objective, decide who is accountable if the ranking is systematically wrong, check whether the business case still holds if the expected benefit is 50 percent lower than planned, and prepare a short pitch for the AI governance committee.

Simple Artifacts to Produce: A completed AI Solution Brief with a defined problem, objective, and solution design; a feasibility review with clear thresholds and a proceed, redesign, or stop decision; and a one-page pitch with a recorded go/no go recommendation.

Purpose: Assess and document fairness and bias risk for an AI system in a structured way, identify gaps in controls, assign remediation, and track readiness over time.

This Workbook helps you produce:

• A structured, 30-item assessment across governance and scope, data and representation, design and development, testing and validation, deployment and transparency, and monitoring and third parties.

• A central evidence log that links documents, tests, and approvals to specific assessment items.

• A live dashboard showing completion, a readiness score, open gaps, and overdue actions, ready for governance reporting.

Example Use Case: Before launching a hiring screening model, the AI governance team completes the fairness assessment, finds a gap in data representation testing across groups, assigns the fix to the data science team with a due date, links the finished test results as evidence, and checks the readiness score on the dashboard before approving deployment.

Simple Artifacts to Produce: A completed fairness and bias assessment with documented responses and priorities; an action tracker with named owners, due dates, and status for each identified gap; and a dashboard ready readiness report for governance review.

Purpose: Turn an approved AI system's controls, limits, and escalation steps into plain language instructions for the people who use it.

This Template helps you produce:

• A plain language explanation of what the system does, who may use it, and what is explicitly off limits.

• Step-by-step operating instructions, including when human review is required.

• Safe use rules covering what information is allowed or restricted, how to check outputs, and when to stop using the system.

Example Use Case: A customer service team is rolling out an approved AI drafting assistant. Before giving access, the AI system owner completes the User Guide to set out what the tool may be used for, what information must never be entered into it, when a supervisor must review a draft before it goes out, and who to contact if the tool produces an unexpected or harmful response.

Simple Artifacts to Produce: A published User Instructions and Operational Use Guide with a recorded approval date; a documented set of do and do not rules, plus stop use conditions for end users; and a support and escalation table with named contacts for each type of issue.