Pick the internal system your business most depends on. For each question, choose the line that fits it today.
1. The UI
a) Forms and fields. Users type, then click Save.
b) Forms with AI helpers bolted on: autosuggest, summarize, draft.
c) The user states an intent. The system works out the rest.
2. The data layer
a) Tables and joins. Reporting is SQL against the warehouse.
b) Tables plus a vector store, used mostly for search.
c) A semantic layer the agent reads and writes through.
3. The work
a) Humans do the work. The software records it.
b) AI assists the humans. The software records both.
c) Agents do most of it. Humans review at the boundaries.
4. The vendor’s roadmap
a) “Better dashboards, more integrations, refreshed UI in Q3.”
b) “AI features rolling out across modules next year.”
c) “Re-architecting around an agent runtime.”
Scoring
- Mostly (a). Wave 1: software of record. Built before AI was an architectural question. Plan the data exit now, not when the vendor announces its agentic SKU.
- Mostly (b). Wave 2: software with AI features. Where most enterprise stacks sit in 2026. The vendor is buying time. So are you.
- Mostly (c). Wave 3: agent-native. Rare today, ordinary in five years. The vertical-AI playbook in production.
Your own wave sets what you can do this quarter. Your vendor’s sets whether you will need to replace them.