An initiative launched as a trial under lighter approval rules grows within those rules, adding users and integrations, until stopping it would cost more than keeping it.
Borderline: whether this move is justified depends on the situation, and only the person in it can judge.
An example
Every jobsite at a general contractor needed a field-scheduling app, in the operations vice president's view, and a capital committee review would take most of a year. Company rules let pilots under 250,000 dollars run without one, so the vice president started a pilot on two sites. Each expansion stayed within the pilot budget for its year, and each was reported in the quarterly operations update: six sites, then fourteen, then thirty-four, with the payroll integration and the user count. In year two, with five hundred users, the vice president asked internal audit to review the pilot and brought a full business case to the capital committee. It was approved in one meeting, since turning the app off would have meant rebuilding crew schedules by hand on every site.
Why it works
Classifying the initiative as a trial moves it below the formal approval threshold, so starting it is cheap. Once it has users, integrations, and a team that depends on it, stopping it carries real operational cost, and the committee's question changes from whether to try it to whether to dismantle something already working. Governance that allows lighter review for pilots makes it possible, as do trial rules that permit growth. Reporting the growth openly keeps the move within the rules and gives reviewers the chance to stop it while stopping is still cheap.
The thinking behind it
William Samuelson Samuelson and Zeckhauser's Status Quo Bias in Decision Making (1988) found that people choose an option disproportionately often when it is framed as the status quo, and traced this to transition costs, loss aversion, and commitment to past choices, among other causes. Once a pilot runs on thirty-four sites, keeping it is the status quo and stopping it is the change. That is why the move works, and why reviewers should ask for a graduation decision before the pilot becomes the existing arrangement.
Hal R. Arkes Arkes and Blumer's The Psychology of Sunk Cost (1985) describes the sunk cost effect: a greater tendency to continue an endeavor once money, effort, or time has been invested, partly to avoid appearing wasteful. Each year of licenses and integration work makes the pilot harder to stop on those grounds alone. A business case written as if the system were new asks the committee to judge it on what it will deliver from here on.
Avinash K. Dixit Dixit and Pindyck's Investment under Uncertainty (1994) treats the ability to delay an irreversible commitment as an option with value, so it can pay to learn cheaply before committing. A pilot is that option, and the clean form honors it by reporting growth openly while stopping is still cheap. The option loses its value once the trial grows so far that withdrawing is no longer realistic.
When it fits
Belief in an initiative, a slow formal approval route, and rules that allow trials below a threshold are the conditions. You need to stay inside the pilot rules, a budget that fits under the threshold, and a plan for the full review you will eventually face.
How to use it well
Read the pilot rules closely and stay inside them on budget, scope, and duration.
- Report every expansion openly in the regular channels, with costs and user counts.
- Collect from the first day the evidence a full business case will need.
- Ask for the graduation review yourself, before anyone has to demand it.
- Be ready to stop if the evidence goes the other way.
Keep the sponsor and the reviewer separate. If you own the pilot, someone else should own the decision to adopt it, and you should be the first to tell them what it costs.
What it costs and where it backfires
Reviewers who feel bypassed will scrutinize the full case harder, and a committee handed a fait accompli may resent it even as it approves. If the evidence is weak, you have spent money and goodwill. The move crosses the line when the growth is hidden from the people who own the threshold, when spending is split to stay under limits the rules mean to apply, or when costs are misreported; that is concealing material facts and a breach of financial controls.
When it is used on you
Pilots that keep growing past their end dates need exit criteria and a named owner of the decision to adopt or stop; ask for both, and track total cost against the original approval. Request a dated graduation review with a full business case.