Already have bots? Validate first, build second
An organization that already built bots on Copilot Studio and has a waiting backlog. The first step is not building another one.
More and more organizations come to us not at zero. There is an IT team that already built a service bot on Copilot Studio, two more in the backlog, and two people every question from the floor goes through.
The temptation is to start building the next one. We start differently.
Month one: validation
We go over what is already in production. The code, the workflows, the data sources. We ask three questions about every bot: does it answer correctly, does anyone use it, and does anyone know how to fix it when it breaks.
The result is a recommendations report with priorities: what to fix, what to streamline, what to leave alone. Usually we find one bot giving stale answers because its data source was never refreshed, and another unused for two months with nobody noticing.
In parallel: scoping with the next department
While validation runs, we sit with the first department in line. We don't ask "what do you want the bot to do". We ask "what do you do by hand twice a day". From the answers we build a uniform scoping template that stays with the team for every next department.
From month two: building together
We build from the backlog together with the IT team, on the tools the organization already has. The goal is not that we build. The goal is that the team builds the next one alone, and that we are the address for questions, not the bottleneck.
Every month closes with a report: how many hours, on what, and what we learned.
How many bots do you have in production today, and when did someone last check they answer correctly?