Four criteria
- High volume — happens daily, so results appear in weeks
- Low consequence — an error costs minutes, not money
- Easily checked — a person can verify correctness at a glance
- Genuinely wanted by whoever does the work now
A project meeting all four succeeds far more often than a better idea meeting two.
Five that reliably work
- Support triage — classify and route before anyone reads
- Sales research briefs — nothing customer-facing, immediate feedback
- Document extraction on one document type with review
- Quality checking of work people already produce
- Meeting notes to actions, into your task system
All five are checkable in seconds by the person receiving the output, which is the property that makes a first project safe.
What to avoid first
Anything customer-facing without review, anything financial without a rule layer, anything where the domain expert is your busiest person, and anything where success is defined vaguely.
Those are all buildable later, with more credibility and a team that has learned how these projects work.
Set the success measure now
One number, agreed before starting, that means it worked. Time per item, straight-through rate, response time — whichever fits.
Also agree what would mean stop. A first project with a defined stopping condition is much easier to get approved.
Then decide the second one
The value of a first project is partly the capability: an evaluation discipline, a monitoring pattern, people who know what these systems need.
The second project is faster and cheaper because of it, and it can be more ambitious for the same reason.