AI Development Lifecycle Evaluation

Discover where your AI development process introduces unmanaged risk — before it shows up in production, a courtroom, or a customer's procurement questionnaire.

Your team is building AI and believes it is following best practices. Without independent assessment, nobody actually knows where the governance gaps are — they were baked into the process from day one, and a team cannot audit its own work objectively. Meanwhile enterprise customers, investors, and regulators are asking about your AI governance, and EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, and state AI regulations are accelerating faster than most internal frameworks can adapt.

This engagement is about the process: how your organization builds AI. A specific product you are building or have already shipped is the separate AI Product Development Accelerator engagement.

What you get

• AI-DLC Risk Assessment Report — Scored evaluation across data, model, deployment, monitoring, and human oversight dimensions. Shareable with your board, customers, and auditors as evidence of governance maturity.
• Prioritized Action Plan — Your governance coverage versus your gaps, benchmarked against NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, and the EU AI Act where applicable, turned into sequenced and owned next steps so you can show regulators and customers where you stand.
• Remediation Roadmap — A 90-day action plan with sequenced recommendations, effort estimates, and ownership assignments. A prioritized plan you can execute, not just a list of problems.
• Executive Summary — A two-page, board- and investor-ready summary of your AI risk posture, key findings, and recommended actions. Ready to share the moment you receive it.

How it works

I. Scoping and Document Collection — Kickoff with your CTO or VP of Engineering to define scope: which AI systems are included and what the primary use cases are. Collect architecture documentation, model cards, data pipelines, CI/CD configuration, and governance policies. Schedule stakeholder interviews.

II. Interviews and Framework Analysis — Six to ten structured interviews across engineering, product, data, and operations. Process artifacts are reviewed against framework dimensions — NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, EU AI Act — and each dimension is scored against the evidence collected.

III. Synthesis and Deliverable Production — Score governance gaps, build the prioritized action plan, sequence remediations with effort estimates, and draft the assessment report and executive summary. Peer-reviewed by a second principal before delivery.

IV. Delivery and Strategy Session — Present findings to the executive team, deliver all four artifacts, and conduct a one-hour strategy session on remediation sequencing, ownership, and how to communicate your posture to customers, investors, and regulators.

Who this is for

• CTOs and VPs of Engineering at companies with in-house ML or LLM development
• Engineering teams six to 24 months into building AI-powered features without dedicated AI governance or MLOps infrastructure
• Product and engineering leads fielding AI governance questions from customers or investors they cannot credibly answer
• Companies preparing for Series B/C fundraising, M&A diligence, or entry into regulated or enterprise markets
• Leadership that knows AI governance is a problem but cannot articulate what specifically needs to change

Engagement details

• Format: Process and governance assessment
• Duration: 2–5 weeks depending on scope
• Participants: Six to ten stakeholders across engineering, product, data, and operations
• Frameworks: NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, EU AI Act
• Follow-up: All deliverables plus a one-hour strategy session

What this does not include

• Implementation of remediation roadmap items (available as a follow-on engagement)
• Ongoing monitoring, continuous assessment, or governance retainer (available separately)
• Legal opinion, regulatory certification, audit opinion, or adversarial penetration testing — Realis is an advisory firm, not an assessment or certification body
• Assessment of one specific AI product — see AI Product Development Accelerator

AWS products supported

• Amazon Bedrock
• Amazon Bedrock AgentCore
• Amazon Bedrock Guardrails
• Amazon Nova
• Amazon SageMaker
• AWS Audit Manager
• AWS Well-Architected
• Kiro

About Realis Solutions Group

Realis is a senior-only advisory firm at the intersection of artificial intelligence, emerging technology, and enterprise risk. Our advisors have built careers launching new technologies, navigating complex risk environments, and building governance frameworks that hold — across 72% of the Fortune 100 and dozens of public-sector organizations. No generalists, no junior bench, no filler: every engagement is principal-led by operators who have held the roles your team is navigating.