AI Agent Readiness Checklist

A Framework for Responsible AI Agent Deployment

AI agents are reshaping how organizations operate – automating tasks, accelerating decisions, and supporting teams at scale. But increased autonomy brings new challenges: shadow AI, over-permissioned access, insufficient oversight, and gaps that lead to data exposure or compliance failures. 

This checklist outlines the core guardrails every organization should put in place before expanding agent usage. Inside, you’ll find maturity questions, guidance for remediating gaps, and learn how to move from experimentation to confident deployment.

What the checklist covers: 

• Ownership and accountability. Establish clear ownership, approval workflows, and escalation paths to prevent shadow AI and ensure responsibility.
• Security and guardrails. Validate least-privilege access, sensitive data protections, identity verification, and real-time guardrail monitoring.
• Lifecycle management. Adopt structured processes for designing, testing, and retiring agents throughout their entire lifecycle.  
• Continuous accountability and metrics. Define success metrics, gather user feedback, and generate audit-ready reporting as agents scale.
   

Deploying AI agents without validating governance is risky — even a single misconfigured permission, prompt, or workflow can create significant exposure. 

This checklist helps you identify weaknesses early, formalize guardrails, and align agent operations with security, compliance, and business outcomes from the start.