How long does it take to get AI to production?
Short answer: For a focused single-feature scope on existing infrastructure, 6–8 weeks from kickoff to live traffic. For greenfield platform plus multi-step agentic workflows, 10–14 weeks. Add 20–30% if data is regulated.
Week-by-week (typical engagement)
Week 0 — Pre-kickoff
Contract, access provisioning, kickoff prep. Free if you've signed; we don't drag this out.
Weeks 1–2 — Assessment
Architecture deep dive, current-state review, risk register. Output: written assessment, fixed-scope plan, ADRs for key decisions. You sign off before we build.
Weeks 3–4 — Foundations
IaC scaffolding, CI/CD wiring, observability stack, eval harness scaffolded. The boring stuff that prevents 67% of incidents (per our field research).
Weeks 4–6 — Build
The AI feature itself. Prompts, tool servers (MCP if applicable), retrieval pipeline, gateway integration. Weekly demos. Your engineers pair with ours from day one.
Weeks 6–8 — Hardening + launch
Load testing, cost guardrails, incident playbooks, redaction layer, rollout plan. Launch behind a feature flag, ramp traffic with kill-switch ready.
Weeks 9–12 (optional) — Operate
Second-line support, weekly office hours, eval expansion. Your team owns it; we're the hotline.
What can be parallelized
- Foundations work (IaC, observability) runs in parallel with prompt + tool design.
- Eval harness setup runs in parallel with the first prompt iteration.
- Security review can start at week 1 if your team allows it — don't wait until week 7.
What can't
- Sign-off on architecture must precede build. We don't ship code from a verbally-agreed plan.
- Production cutover gates on eval pass-rate and load test, regardless of week count.
- Regulated data engagements gate on signed DPAs with model providers — that's a calendar problem, not an engineering one.
Compared to typical industry timelines
Big-firm transformations quote 6–18 months. The bulk of that time is roadmap meetings, multi-party kickoffs, and discovery debates. We skip those. The actual engineering for a focused first feature has never legitimately needed more than ~8 weeks in our experience.
Book an intro to scope your specific timeline. The first 10 minutes will tell you if 6 or 12 weeks fits.