How to Evaluate an Enterprise GraphRAG Pilot
Define a baseline, question set and acceptance criteria for an evidence-linked enterprise AI pilot.
Write the acceptance criteria first
Agree who reviews results, what constitutes a supported answer and which mistakes are unacceptable. Include questions that should be answered, ambiguous requests and requests that should receive an abstention. Record source versions and permitted access scope.
Use a meaningful baseline
Compare with the actual current workflow or a credible simpler retrieval system. Keep sources, model settings and evaluation conditions comparable where possible. Record differences that prevent a direct comparison rather than presenting misleading headline scores.
Measure more than answer fluency
Review correctness, citation support and retrieval coverage separately. A valid link does not prove that a source supports a claim. Where relevant, assess permission behaviour, latency, cost and maintenance requirements. Have domain reviewers inspect errors and disagreements.
Document the decision
Report question counts, scoring rules, source coverage and limitations alongside results. Avoid tuning on the final evaluation questions. Conclude with a recommendation to expand, revise or stop, including the work required for production deployment.