In regulated sectors, the first use case does more than prove value. It teaches risk, legal and audit teams what good looks like. Choose it for how well it can be controlled, not only for how big the prize is.
Selection criteria
- Internal before external — an assistant for staff is easier to supervise than one that speaks to customers.
- Human decision stays — the system prepares, summarizes or drafts; a person decides.
- Clear source material — answers can be traced to approved documents.
- Measurable baseline — current handling time, error rate or backlog is known.
- Reversible — if it misbehaves, switching it off returns the old process unchanged.
Bring control functions in at the start
Invite compliance, security and internal audit to the first design review, and agree what evidence they will want: logs, test results, a description of data flows and a named owner. Building that evidence trail on the first project makes the second one much faster.
A modest, well-controlled first system that audit has already seen is worth more than an ambitious one that waits in review.