Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference

09 – 12 December 2019 / Las Vegas

Reasons why Your

AI Project will Fail
(and What to Do Instead)
Chirag Dekate

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 Top

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 Reason No.

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The next tool
we buy will help
us catch-up on
AI initiatives.

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 “Tool sprawl” resulting in underutilization
What or under implementation.
We See …
Challenges in navigating vendor hype.

Struggle in identifying the right vendor.

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 “It's not you, it's me” — examine your ability to
What to Do leverage tools.
Instead …
Utilize outcomes-oriented licensing and
engagement models for AI.
Use the right mix of “build-buy-outsource” to
ramp up AI initiatives.

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 Reason No.

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Waiting to hire the
perfect candidate
to lead
AI initiatives.

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 Domain/Business
Knowledge

What
We See … Traditional Classical Data
Business IT and Analytics

Core
I&O/Enterprise AI
Architecture
Skill Set Data Science
Skill Set

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 Ramp up educating existing teams with data
What to Do science skills.
Instead …
Implement structural changes that support
the scaling of success in AI across organizations.
Adopt agile principles for AI and increasing the
rate of small changes versus major reorganizations.

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 Reason No.

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What works in
AI pilots will scale
in production.

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What We See …

Early adopters and organizations struggling to

What productize AI pilots.
We See …
Data scientists, I&O, enterprise architects, data
engineers operating in existing silos.
Data science lab practices do not scale in
enterprise ecosystems.

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 Delivering products from AI pilots requires diverse
stakeholders to operate as a team.

Data
What to Do Scientist
Instead …
I&O Line
AI
Initiatives of Business

Enterprise Data
Architects Engineers

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 Reason No.

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Replicating popular
AI initiatives
because they
worked for others.

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 Tagging existing initiatives with AI monikers,
What because AI attracts funding and attention.
We See …
Lack of alignment to business use cases or
data sources.

Inability to characterize “success” in AI initiatives.

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 Ask — what business outcome drives your AI
What to Do initiative?
Instead …
Avoid AI initiatives that implement particular
technical approach instead of solving business
relevant problems.

Conduct a stakeholder analysis to determine

and engage those who are critical to success.

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 Reason No.

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Taking a “set it
and forget it”
approach to AI.

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 Lack of awareness of operationalization
What complexities in AI workloads.
We See …
Prior design patterns have created a deployment
culture that optimizes on “set and forget.”

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 Track changes in data sources to identify
What to Do data drift.
Instead …
Continuously monitor accuracy of
deployed models.
Set retraining thresholds to continuously improve
AI workloads deployed in production.

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 Reason No.

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“Ideating about
AI” is more useful
than actually
“implementing AI.”

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 “Fast Following” is not a winning strategy for AI.

What Company
We See … Culture
Skill Set

Lack
of Data
Technology
Use Cases
Complexity

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 Several small AI projects driven by business use
What to Do cases and requirements.
Instead …
Share best practices of success and failure across
initiatives to scale rapidly.
Nurture infrastructure stacks that promote
reusability, reliability and reproducibility.

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Rapidly evolve
from ideation
to innovation …

Now you know,

and knowing is
half the battle.

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Recommendations

Adopt agile principles for managing AI initiatives and increasing the

rate of small changes versus major reorganization.
Continuously monitor data and model for drift, and retrain
models periodically.
Share best practices of success and failure across initiatives
to scale rapidly.
Use the right mix of “build-buy-outsource” to ramp up AI initiatives.
Utilize outcomes oriented licensing and engagement models for AI.

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Action Plan for I&O Leaders

Monday Morning:
• Use business-relevant use cases that have sufficient data to select the
right AI projects.
• Create cross-functional teams across data science, data engineering and I&O to
drive AI projects.
Next 90 Days:
• Initiate data collect and connect initiatives to nurture data sources.
• Curate platforms that enable data, and model reusability, reproducibility and reliability.
Next 12 Months:
• Track data and model drift to minimize failure and increase utility of AI projects.
• Curate CI/CD integrated AI pipelines to operationalize AI projects.

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Recommended Gartner Research

 Predicts 2019: Artificial Intelligence Core Technologies

Chirag Dekate, Erick Brethenoux and Others (G00375468)
 Market Guide: Machine Learning Infrastructure as a Service
Chirag Dekate and Arun Chandrasekaran (G00341522)
 Innovation Insight for Artificial Intelligence for
I&O Transformation
Milind Govekar and Chirag Dekate (G00380851)
 Market Guide for Machine Learning Compute Infrastructures
Chirag Dekate and Arun Chandrasekaran (G00362287)
For information, please contact your Gartner representative.
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