The short answer

  • Evaluate a specific task with an identifiable judge of correctness.
  • Keep ambiguous and unanswerable examples in the release check.
  • Review the whole operating workflow, including human effort and failure recovery.

Describe the task in operational terms

Name the input, the expected output and the person who currently judges correctness. “Use AI for support” is too broad. “Suggest a routing category from an incoming message and explain uncertainty” defines a task that can be evaluated. Separate classification, retrieval, drafting and external actions; each may need different controls and may not need the same model or any model at all.

Collect examples that can expose failure

Include ordinary requests, incomplete information, conflicting documents, hostile instructions and cases where no answer exists. Sanitize the examples and preserve the expected decision. A test set built only from successful demonstrations cannot reveal the operating burden of exceptions. Keep difficult examples even when the prompt is changed, so improvements are compared against the same problem rather than a moving selection of favorable cases.

Define the cost of being wrong

An imperfect internal suggestion and an unauthorized customer refund have different consequences. Write down which output can be reviewed, which action is reversible and which action always needs approval. Apply permission checks outside the model. If a workflow cannot safely stop or hand over to a person, increasing the quality of the prompt does not solve the control problem.

Compare the complete workflow

Compare a model-assisted path with deterministic rules and current manual handling. Include review time, integration failures and source maintenance rather than measuring only response fluency. Start with read-only or draft assistance, record where people disagree and decide what evidence is required before expanding permissions. The evaluation should support a bounded decision rather than a general claim that AI is ready for the business.

Apply this to your project.

Bring the current workflow and the part you are unsure about. We can help define the next useful engineering decision.

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