The AI-Ready Data Checklist: A Practical AI Data Readiness Assessment

Most AI pilots work. Far fewer reach production, and the reason usually sits in the data behind them. The AI-Ready Data Checklist gives data, IT and AI leaders a practical AI data readiness assessment: 27 evidence-based questions that test whether your enterprise data can support one specific AI use case before you build.

AI-ready data is data that is fit for a defined AI use case. It’s relevant, representative, accurate enough, current enough, clearly defined, traceable to its source and governed by the right permissions. The same customer dataset can be ready for a segmentation model and nowhere near ready for an agent that updates customer records, which is why this checklist assesses one use case at a time.

The checklist is built from Tellestia’s integration and data delivery work across data integration, master data management and API/ Integration governance. It focuses on what decides production readiness: ownership, shared definitions, freshness, lineage, access and monitoring.

What’s Inside the AI Data Readiness Checklist

• 27 questions across nine readiness areas, from use case and data ownership to security, unstructured content and monitoring.
• A fillable readiness scorecard with green, amber, red and N/A ratings, evidence references, owners and due dates.
• Two checkpoints that show when a use case is ready for implementation and when it is ready for production release.
• Guidance for RAG and AI agents, including document versioning for retrieval and assessing answering and acting separately.
• A worked example showing how narrowing scope can make a use case ready without rebuilding your data estate.
• A five-step path from assessment to governed, monitored production.

Download the checklist, choose one AI use case and work through it with your business and IT owners.