Model drift discussions happening but no tracking yet

Teams often talk about model drift long before they actually measure it. That is risky, because drift becomes real the moment user behavior, data distributions, or business rules start changing in ways the model was not built for.

Without tracking, drift is just a feeling. With tracking, it becomes visible through accuracy drops, output changes, retrieval misses, or shifts in user satisfaction.

The best time to instrument drift is before the problem is obvious. Monitoring gives the team a chance to react early instead of discovering the issue after users have already lost trust.