Proof of Concept Plan Template
A pilot plan, a criteria agreement both sides sign, and the sizing sheet that shows which criteria your window can actually decide.
Free download · No account needed
Success Criteria Agreement
[Buyer] and [Vendor] — Pilot Success Criteria
Window: [start] to [end], [n] calendar days
Scope: [team], [n] named users, about [n] [units] a day
Observations in window: about [n], against [n] in the baseline period
Decision maker: [name, role] Decision date: [date]
C-01. [Criterion, in one sentence somebody can quote]
| Unit | One [quote / ticket / onboarding / named user] |
|---|---|
| Observations | — |
| Baseline | — source and period |
| Passes if | — absolute, not only relative |
| Smallest difference this window can decide | — |
| Verdict available | — |
| Evidence | — |
What is not a criterion
Anything the pilot going well would not change. One line each, with a named owner and a date, carried into the Pilot Plan.
What happens on [decision date]
On a pass. On a partial. On a fail. All three written before the pilot starts.
Every proof of concept template in circulation lands on the same instruction: make the success criteria specific, measurable and dated. None of them checks the second half of that promise. A criterion with a number and a deadline in it can still be undecidable, because settling it takes more observations than the pilot will produce. Nothing about the wording gives that away. So the pilot runs, the data arrives, and the last week goes on arguing about what the criterion meant.
Take a thirty-day pilot on one nine-person quoting desk that handles fourteen quotes a day, which is 420 quotes inside the window. Cutting the rework rate from 12 percent to 8 percent sounds like the most concrete criterion on the list. The count it needs depends on where the rate already sits, and here that is about 882 quotes on each side, or 63 days of this desk. Six criteria came out of that discovery, and two were decidable as the buyer wrote them.
This pack sizes each one before anybody signs it, then rewrites the ones the window cannot settle. The rework criterion becomes a back-test over 96 cases that already exist, decidable in week one instead of week nine. Open it in River and the agent reads your discovery notes, computes the counts and drafts the agreement. Or download the pack as Word documents and CSV sheets and size the criteria yourself.
What's in the pack
Criteria Sizing sheet
One row per criterion with its unit of observation, the count the window produces, the smallest difference that count can decide, and a verdict of decidable, rewrite or dependency.
Success Criteria Agreement
The document both sides countersign. Every criterion carries its unit, its count, the comparison that settles it and the date the verdict is available, because a standard travels with its method of assessment.
How a Criterion Is Sized
The four questions, the three rewrites, and a fully worked pilot where six stated criteria became five decidable ones and a dated dependency.
Pilot Plan
Scope with the volume that justifies it, named owners, the dependency table, data and access, and the week-by-week shape of the window.
Milestone Tracker sheet
Built backwards from the decision date, with days-before, what each milestone blocks, and the slack column that shows which four rows move the decision.
Criteria Evidence Log sheet
One row per observation with who saw it, who from the buyer was present, and where it can be found again, so a verdict is never a recollection.
Exit Note
One block per criterion with required, observed, verdict and evidence rows, plus the courses in front of the buyer on a partial result.
How to use it
- 1
Open in River, or download it
Open the pack in River and let the agent size the criteria, or download the blank Word and CSV files instantly with no account.
- 2
Send the notes and the team's volume
Discovery notes, the buyer's requirements list, the dates, and roughly how much work the team in scope gets through in a week. That last number is the one nobody writes down and the one everything else depends on.
- 3
Size every criterion, then rewrite what fails
Each criterion gets a unit, an observation count and a floor. Rate comparisons become back-tests over cases that already exist, rare-event targets become replays of the records where the fault already happened, and percentages on small teams become counts of people.
- 4
Sign it, then log evidence as it arrives
The agreement gets countersigned before kickoff and the Milestone Tracker runs backwards from the decision date. Every observation takes a row the day it happens, which is what the Exit Note is built from and what a close plan picks up.
Frequently asked questions
Is this template free?
Yes. The whole pack downloads as Word documents and CSV sheets with no signup and no credit card. Edit with AI is a separate, optional path for sellers who want the criteria sized and the agreement drafted from their own discovery notes. The template library holds the rest of the packs.
What does it mean to size a success criterion?
Name what one observation is, count how many the pilot window will produce at the team's real volume, then work out the smallest difference that count can separate from ordinary variation. The floor depends on the spread of what you are measuring and falls with the square root of the count, so halving it takes four times the volume.
What happens to a criterion the pilot cannot decide?
It gets rewritten, not dropped, and the original stays visible next to it. A rate comparison becomes a back-test over cases that already exist. A rare-event target becomes a replay of the records where the fault already happened. A percentage on nine users becomes a count of users, since nine people cannot produce 90 percent.
What format are the downloaded files?
Word documents (.docx) for the plan, the agreement, the sizing method and the exit note, and CSV (.csv) for the three sheets, zipped into one file. They open natively in Word, Pages, Google Docs, Excel, Numbers and Sheets, with nothing to convert. Inside River the same content opens as live Docs and Sheets.
How is this different from a generic POC plan template?
A generic template asks you to write measurable criteria and stops there. This one checks each criterion against the observations your window will actually produce, and hands back the count it needs in your own units: this many more days, or this many more teams. That is the conversation a champion can act on.
What does 'Edit with AI' actually do?
It creates a free River account and installs this exact pack as a private workspace, with the agent ready to read your discovery notes, the buyer's scored evaluation and the team's volume. Nothing is written until you send it something.
Where does this sit against the proposal and the close plan?
Before both. The pilot decides whether there is a deal, so the criteria come first. Then the proposal pack prices what the pilot proved, and the mutual action plan carries the dates from the decision through to signature.
Sign criteria the pilot can actually settle
Download the blank pack as Word and CSV files, or open this exact pack in River and have the criteria sized against your own numbers.
Edit with AI