plan-a-pilot-program

name	plan-a-pilot-program
category	start
description	Plan a pilot program with a bounded population, hypotheses, operational controls, success and harm measures, support, stop rules, and scale decision. Use when testing a new service, policy, product, process, or partnership before broader adoption.

plan-a-pilot-program

A pilot should reduce a named uncertainty without exposing participants to ungoverned risk.

When to use

• Use when representative real-world operation is needed before scale.
• Do not select only easy participants or call a promotional launch an experiment.

Procedure

1. State decision, hypotheses, unknowns, alternatives, sponsor, and authority.
2. Define representative population, inclusion, exclusion, recruitment, consent where needed, accessibility, and sample limitations.
3. Bound geography, time, volume, capability, staff, data, integrations, vendors, and financial exposure.
4. Establish baseline, success, quality, safety, fairness, privacy, cost, adoption, and harm measures.
5. Define workflow, training, support, incident, exception, continuity, rollback, and participant communication.
6. Set stop, pause, expand, repeat, modify, and reject criteria before starting.
7. Capture quantitative outcomes, qualitative evidence, operational burden, failures, and missing data.
8. Make the scale decision with limitations, conditions, owner, and next evidence.

Done

• A pilot plan records decision, population, scope, controls, measures, operations, support, stop rules, timeline, and owners
• Representativeness, baseline, consent, accessibility, data, safety, support, measure, stop, and scale-decision checks verify learning