Kill criteria
Conditions agreed before a pilot starts that stop, pause or redesign it. They turn a pilot into an experiment instead of a way to keep spending.
Kill criteria are the conditions under which an AI pilot ends, pauses or changes direction. They are agreed before money is committed, so the team is not deciding under the pull of momentum.
A pilot earns its continuation by changing what the company knows. It should not earn it simply by continuing to exist. Good kill criteria separate the reasons to stop: the intervention is unsafe, it is economically unconvincing, or the test can no longer answer its original question.
Kill criteria are only useful if someone is empowered to apply them. The pilot should also leave something behind when it stops, such as the binding constraint that was found, so the idea can be reopened when that constraint moves. See stop rule and decision instrument.
Related terms
Decision instrument
A pilot or test designed to reduce uncertainty about a decision, not to show that something works. A good decision instrument can end in no.
Stop rule
A specific condition that ends or changes an AI initiative, with an owner empowered to act on it. A stop rule without an owner is a slide, not a control.
AI pilot
A limited trial of an AI use case to test whether it works in practice. A pilot proves one team can succeed; capability starts when others can reproduce the result.
Binding constraint
The main reason an AI idea was rejected at a given time, recorded so the decision can be reopened only when that specific constraint actually changes.