A crawl, walk, run AI roadmap puts your AI plans in three stages: use what you have, connect what you have, then build what you need. You only move up a stage when people use the current one every day.
What is a crawl, walk, run AI roadmap?
The stages:
- Crawl: the tools you already pay for. The AI inside your email, documents, spreadsheets, CRM, and accounting software. Cost: mostly switching it on and teaching people. I do this in a 90-minute session for $450.
- Walk: small automations between the tools. Work that moves from one system to the next without someone retyping it. Cost: a build at a fixed price or $150 an hour, plus a monthly platform bill.
- Run: custom AI. Software built for your process or your product. Cost: a larger fixed-price build plus running costs and someone to look after it.
The plan is written by department. Sales may be ready to walk while finance is still crawling.
Why not skip to run?
Run is built on what you learn in crawl and walk. A team that has used the tools for a year knows which steps need judgment and which do not. A team that skips ahead builds on guesses, and guesses make expensive software.
Habits matter too. If people do not use the AI already in their email, they will not use a custom tool either. Where to start with AI covers the first step in more detail.
How do I know when we are ready to move up?
- Crawl to walk: people use the tools every day without being reminded, and you can name a step where they still copy from one system into another.
- Walk to run: the automations are stable, somebody owns them, and there is a job left over that no tool or platform does well. Custom AI versus off-the-shelf tools covers that decision.
What does a business well into walk look like?
At Quartz Importers MN, where I hold the fractional CTO seat, a small sales team runs on 49 automated workflows every day, with 39,645 logged runs and a 0.2 percent failure rate. Run is for the work those workflows cannot handle.
How do I get a roadmap made?
The two-day AI workshop, $6,500, ends with workflow maps and a crawl, walk, run plan by department. If you want someone to stay and move the team through the stages, that is the adoption work. Tell me where your team is on the start form.
What should I not do?
Do not buy a custom build in month one. Do not put the whole company on one timeline. If the roadmap does not say who owns each stage, it is a wish list.
Answered by Jared Lukes, Minneapolis. Twenty-five years in brand, UX, and technology, currently holding fractional AI and technology seats at three companies. About Jared.