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Minimal Validation Report

Instructions

Complete this report on days 18–20 in preparation for the Gate 1 Review (day 21). The report is intentionally brief: 2 pages, 60–90 minutes to complete.

The full version of the validation report is available at Validation Report (full).

Project: [Name] Period: [Start date] – [End date prototype] AI PM: [Name] Developer: [Name] Sponsor: [Name] Gate 1 Review date: [Date]

Section 1 — What did we build?

1.1 Solution Description (3–5 sentences)

[Describe the prototype. What does the system do? How does it work? Which technology was used? Which collaboration mode (1–4)?

E.g.: We built a document Q&A system that answers questions about our internal policy manuals. The system uses RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) to retrieve relevant passages and formulate an answer. The end user asks a question via a Jupyter notebook interface; the system returns an answer plus the source passages. A staff member reviews the answer before use (Mode 2 — Advisory).]

1.2 Technical Configuration

Parameter Value
AI model / API [e.g. Claude claude-haiku-4-5 via Anthropic API]
Data source [e.g. 45 internal PDF policy documents, total 320 pages]
Interface [e.g. Jupyter notebook / Python script / Simple web page]
Collaboration Mode [e.g. Mode 2 — Advisory]
Repository [e.g. GitHub repo link or internal location]

Section 2 — Does it work? (Golden Set Results)

2.1 Test Setup

Parameter Value
Number of test cases (Golden Set) [e.g. 20]
Created by [e.g. Name of domain expert, not the developer]
Test date [Date]
Edge cases [e.g. 4 of the 20 cases]

2.2 Results

Category Count Percentage
✅ Correct
⚠️ Partially correct
❌ Wrong
Quality score (Correct + 0.5 × Partially) / 20 × 100%

Quality score: ___%

2.3 Notable Findings

Describe up to 3 notable successes or shortcomings.

# Finding Cause Impact
1 [E.g. System performs poorly on questions about legislation older than 2020] [E.g. Old PDFs not indexed] [Low/Medium/High]
2
3

Section 3 — What did we learn?

Note 3–5 concrete lessons. Focus on insights that are valuable for the next phase, not on technical details.

# Lesson Recommendation for next phase
1 [E.g. Data quality of old PDFs is a bigger bottleneck than expected.] [E.g. Invest in document hygiene before Phase 2.]
2 [E.g. Domain experts ask many questions about context not found in the documents.] [E.g. Consider a FAQ supplement or explicit scope delineation.]
3
4
5

Section 4 — Recommendation

4.1 Final Assessment

Choose one option and justify in no more than 3 sentences.

  • ✅ Go — The prototype demonstrates the value of the use case. We proceed to the Builder phase with a full project charter.
  • 🔄 Pivot — The use case is feasible, but we adjust the scope/approach. [Describe the pivot.]
  • ⛔ No-Go — The prototype has not demonstrated the value. We stop the project and document the lessons.

Justification (max. 3 sentences):

[E.g. The prototype achieves a quality score of 85% on the Golden Set and saves an average of 8 minutes processing time per e-mail. The technical approach is feasible and data quality is sufficient. We recommend Go provided the scope is explicitly limited to English-language e-mails.]

4.2 Preconditions for Go (only for Go decisions)

What needs to be in place before the Builder phase starts?

  • [E.g. Formal Guardian appointed (name: ___)]
  • [E.g. Privacy Impact Assessment completed for personal data in e-mails]
  • [E.g. Budget approved for production infrastructure (€ ___)]
  • [E.g. Full Project Charter completed before [date]]

Gate 1 Review Decision
Decision (Go / No-Go / Pivot):
Date:
Sponsor name:
Signature / E-mail confirmation:
Sponsor justification (optional):