The role of project governance, project capitalisation and stewardship is often overlooked, even though these points might seem obvious. We advise all of our customers to consider them before embarking on their AI journey. Most of these points can be applied to all good (IT) project management:

• Clarify who is responsible for the project and ensure that this role is equipped with sufficient authority to make decisions and represent the project in the management team or the board of directors. Depending on company size and the size of the project relative to total capital spent, it might even be recommended to have a member of the board in charge of the project

• The same applies to project stewardship. Ensure you have a steering committee overseeing the project that is staffed with all relevant departments and has sufficient authority and is well connected in these department to pull the right strings

• Ensure the project is written into the annual company investment budget and signed off by the board or senior management to ensure sufficient funds are secured in advance

• Start small with a small pilot using a limited subset of your data to complete a proof of concept and ensure the proposed solution is working and is scaleable. This is the most efficient path of risk mitigation in AI projects

• Determine the desired outcomes. How will the success of the project be measured?

Successfully implementing AI into your existing business processes and IT landscape requires a number of strategic resources which must be deployed in the correct order. Very often we find that our clients have a number of these resources already in place, sometimes without being aware of them. Data resources are the most common example, many businesses already sit on a large amount of data, the data might be unstructured though or stored in different systems and therefore difficult to utilise.

We typically recommend our clients to conduct a stock take of current relevant resources using our proven methodology template. These relevant resources can be assigned to one of the following category examples:

1. Data assets

2. Current processes creating data

3. Existing system infrastructure

Based on a comprehensive analysis we can assist your business to establish resource gaps. These will become the deliverables of the project.

Enabling your AI strategy could potentially entail obtaining and developing a number of different resources. Recent research has shown that the three dominant resource categories company are concerned with are:

• AI knowledge

• AI talent (machine learning engineers, python programmers, cloud engineers)

• Data (to feed the data hungry AI models)

The same research has shown that given these complex resource challenges, most companies rely on specialised consultants or AI platform providers and their specialists to acquire relevant resources.  Especially human resources and experienced AI experts are very scarce in the market at the moment, the large players paying top dollar to attract them; leaving everyone else to scramble for talent.

So, to start your AI journey, it is advisable to rely on specialised consultants. AI platform providers also offer experienced consultants to support you. The issue with these consultants is, that they are obviously not product agnostic. This could be a problem if you are not entirely sure which solution the business requires at the start of the project. Engaging a general AI consultant might be preferable, as they can advise on the available tools in the market and compare them for you. At the same time they can take stock of existing resources and assist you in determining resource gaps.

Research is also highlighting the importance of establishing internal programs to develop in-house AI resources. Consultants, whilst very useful, only provide transient resources. Once they leave the company they take their know how with them. It is therefore pivotal to develop knowledge transfer and training programs as part of the AI implementation project to ensure knowledge is retained  and developed in the long term. This way the business can develop sustained competitive advantage through application of artificial intelligence tools.