Stop spinning your wheels: The AI Game Plan

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Martijn Veldkamp

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March 7, 2025

My previous articles explored the “AI Battle Royale” – the explosive proliferation of AI models by all these different companies that want to end up on top. And the subsequent “Countless Wheels, Where Are the Cars?”. I think we all see the countless variations on language models, but relative few of truly transformative ideas.

I ended with a clear call to action: you need a game plan.

We all need a way to direct and orchestrate these powerful technology pushes from the different vendors to drive real business value. That game plan, that orchestration of AI governance, is increasingly taking shape in my head.

I want to offer my definition of “AI Governance”

It’s not just about the newest models and the better outcomes. It is also not just about compliance and ethics. Although those are very very important. It’s about strategically thinking about your resources including GenAI and these Agents. And aligning them with your business goals. Where do you invest in and why?

Thanks to a great cup of coffee I think that key aspects I would like to include in my AI game plan are:

Strategic Alignment: In what way can the different AI Solutions from all these vendors support my overall business strategy? What are the key objectives that I want to achieve (e.g., work load reduction, efficiency increase, cost reduction, revenue growth, customer experience improvement)? Resource Allocation: How will I prioritize AI projects? Is that any way different then normal IT investmentst. How is budgeting for AI development, infrastructure, and talent different? The only worry that I have is that with the new sexy AI flavor of the week we will incur Opportunity Costs. Model Selection & Management: The other new thing I thought of is that we need a framework taht will help evaluate and choose the right AI tool/solution/models. (I find it a bit funny that my first reaction was to ask Gemini can you create me a framework. Just to have an idea how that might look like. I have similar frameworks from when I was a consultant at Quint) Lifecycle Management: How will I manage the lifecycle of these models (training, deployment, monitoring, retirement)? What are the associated costs of switching model? How does my architecture help me insulate of these changes but still help me adapt to these iniatives? Measurement & Iteration: How will I track the performance of these AI initiatives? How will I measure ROI? How will this continuously improve and adapt my AI strategy? Orchestration & Integration: Last but not least. This is how I want to tie all the articles together. This is the core of the “car” building. How will I connect different AI models and systems to work together? How will I integrate AI into existing business processes?

Ofcourse you need Data Governance and Risk Management but these were to obvious.

Game plan

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I love that I can throw random stuff in the mix and then ask DALL-E to generate an image

I’m still chewing on this. I have several mindmaps that follow basically all the normal steps that you have with any plan. It still looks a lot like a consultant that sells open doors.

I will start detailing this out and come back somewhere next week or so. I need long walks with the dogs to have my background processor make sense of it all. If someone wants to help and iterate the plan with me and refine it further… yes please.

I have the rough outline of a Maturity Model combined with Gen AI capability maps, but it’s not there yet.

Opportunity Cost

Coming back to why you need a plan. Investing in any single, and let’s be honest here, still unproven technology carries certain risks. Opportunity costs is one of those risks.

Are you investing because in any form of AI because “others are doing it too”? You might lock yourself into a specific technology path, potentially missing out on other solutions that emerge as this AI landscape keeps rapidly evolving.

Keeping line with my earlier analogies, focusing solely on these individual “wheels” diverts resources and attention from the crucial task of building the “car”.

Start with developing the overarching strategy to govern AI for genuine, long-term business value.

What do you think? Am I missing some key aspect that you would include in the AI Game Plan?