Ballast-AI puts kill criteria in paid pilot SOWs by default. Here’s the minimum set operators should insist on—whether they hire us or not.
- Baseline definition. How the metric is measured, on which population, starting when.
- Target threshold. What movement counts as success at pilot close—not a vanity dashboard.
- Go / no-go gates. Explicit checkpoints (e.g., end of week 1 baseline, day 45 adoption, day 90 metric).
- Control failures. Conditions where work pauses: access denied, audit gaps, unsafe autonomy requests.
- Scope freeze rules. How change requests are accepted or deferred so the metric stays testable.
- Handoff definition. What “production” and “maintainable” mean in artifacts and owners.
Related reading: readiness checklist · how we work.