AI Project Success: Clear Metrics by Month Six

Most AI initiatives don't fail. They just never actually finish.

The vendor hits sprint deliverables, the internal champion sends positive updates, the pilot gets extended. And somewhere around month eight, most people in the room can't tell you whether it's working because most teams never wrote down what "working" meant before it started.

Month six is the honest check-in. Three things should be true by then: one use case live with real users, one business metric that's moved, and a second use case staged and ready. That's the gut check on whether you're building something or just spending.

Stanford HAI's 2026 AI Index found 88% of organizations use AI in at least one business function, but fewer than 10% have fully scaled it in a single one. The organizations in that 10% almost always did one thing differently. They defined what month six looked like before month one started.

We wrote the plain-language planning guide for CEOs funding their first AI project:

What does "on track" mean at your company six months into an AI project? #AI #AIStrategy #EnterpriseAI #AIImplementation #AIBudget