9-Step AI Governance Implementation Strategy and the Solutions to Know

### Executive summary This article outlines a 9-step AI governance implementation strategy, explains why governance is important, lists common challenges, and compares commercial AI governance, observability, and security solutions (e.g., Mend AI, Strac, Credo AI, IBM watsonx.governance, Fiddler AI). It provides practical actions (committee formation, AI-BOM, risk assessments, policy development, monitoring, and incident response) and vendor feature/limitation summaries to guide organizations adopting AI governance.