setup
Scope like an MVP
Hone the pilot to one problem and one use case.
One problem
Resist the tour of every workflow. Pick the pain that maps to cost, risk, or revenue and can produce evidence in one to two months.
Write the edges
List what you will not do. New requests go to a phase-two backlog.
Clock discipline
Ideally one to two months. The longer a pilot runs, the more likely it drifts away from an enterprise deal — a pattern from the source session.
Claims and patterns on this page are paraphrased from practitioner session notes and the Startup Bible pilots page. See Sources.