The Metric Mandate
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The Metric Mandate
If you can’t put a number on your AI goal, you don’t have a goal — you have a wish.
Projects without clear metrics can’t fail, because there’s no definition of failure. They drift, consuming money while delivering “lessons learned” instead of results.
Before any AI project leaves the Purpose phase:
| Requirement | Must Answer |
|---|---|
| Named business metric | What specific number will change? |
| Current baseline | What is that number today? |
| Success threshold | What’s the minimum improvement to justify investment? |
| Measurement timeline | When will we measure? |
| Kill criteria | What result means we stop? |
If any field is blank or “TBD”, the project is not ready.
Pause and apply: Pick one AI project you’re considering (or already running). Can you fill in all five rows of the Metric Mandate table? Try it now — even rough answers count. If any field is blank, you’ve just found the gap that’s most likely to kill the project.
A project that can’t answer all five isn’t ready for Audience analysis. Return to Purpose.