By Jon W. Hansen, FCIPS · Procurement Insights · 13 November 2026
How many AI pilots is your organization running right now? Now pick the one you’re least sure about: the one that reads green on the dashboard but still hasn’t delivered the business result you expected.
If one comes to mind, you’re in a bind most leaders recognize. You can stop the pilot and admit it didn’t work. Or you can keep funding it and hope it turns. Neither choice is comfortable, because neither one is based on knowing why the pilot stalled in the first place.
That bind is exactly what our method was built to resolve, and the method is not new. It did not start with AI. It began in 1983, when I first saw the pattern later named Hansen Strand Commonality™. I formulated it as a theory in 1998, when it turned around a failing service contract, and it has been applied and refined through each technology wave since. What is new is where we are pointing it. Today Hansen Procurement Technologies is bringing that proven method to the problem so many organizations now face, the stalled AI pilot, with pilot rescue: give us one stalled pilot, and in two weeks you’ll know where you stand.
What you get in two weeks
We work on one pilot, not your whole portfolio, and we deliver three answers:
Why it stalled. We find the real cause by tracing back from the business result that didn’t appear, not by reviewing everything that could be improved.
How to unstall it. You get a short fix-first list: the specific things to correct, in the order they need to happen, with a named owner for every item. The owner is a person on your side with the authority to make that fix, because most stalled pilots are stuck on fixes that sit between departments and belong to no one.
Whether to keep going. You get a clear call to proceed, fix first, or stop, with the reasons. A well-founded decision to stop is a good answer too. It ends the spending and tells you what to do differently next time.
There are no new systems to install, no IT involvement and no disruption to the pilot. We work alongside it, not inside your technology.
How we find the cause
A complete risk inventory for AI can run to hundreds of factors, and each one can look fine in its own review. Pilots don’t usually stall because one factor fails. They stall where a few factors cross, at what we call the seams: an approver measured on cost when the decision needs speed, an AI agent recommending a supplier it has no capacity data on, an order nobody has the authority to stop once the cutoff passes.
You can’t find those crossings by mapping forward from a plan, because the plan doesn’t show them. So we start from the one result that didn’t arrive and trace backward. The trail shows which handful of factors caused it, and who can act on each one.
You can’t map forward what you can’t explain. Trace it back first.
Where the method comes from
The method has a long lineage:
1983. Hansen Strand Commonality™ began here. Programming in dBASE II, I first saw that improving one line of code could stop another, once working, from working at all. I formulated the theory in 1998, and it is the foundation of every trace-back we run.
Since 2007. Procurement Insights has published independent procurement and technology analysis for nineteen years, without vendor sponsorship.
91%. That is the average output accuracy of ARA™ RAM 2025™ across our documented case labs, assessed against the evidence. It is a running figure, rechecked as every new lab is completed.
Sixty seconds to find out
We’ve built a short self-check: five simple questions about the pilot you’re least sure of. Each one is designed to tap into the historical archive behind ARA™ RAM 2025™: nearly two decades of documented cases in which initiatives stalled at the same seams. It takes sixty seconds, and it tells you whether you’re looking at a pilot that’s on track, one showing warning signs, or one that has stalled.
Pick One Stalled Pilot: Introducing Pilot Rescue
Posted on November 13, 2026
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By Jon W. Hansen, FCIPS · Procurement Insights · 13 November 2026
How many AI pilots is your organization running right now? Now pick the one you’re least sure about: the one that reads green on the dashboard but still hasn’t delivered the business result you expected.
If one comes to mind, you’re in a bind most leaders recognize. You can stop the pilot and admit it didn’t work. Or you can keep funding it and hope it turns. Neither choice is comfortable, because neither one is based on knowing why the pilot stalled in the first place.
That bind is exactly what our method was built to resolve, and the method is not new. It did not start with AI. It began in 1983, when I first saw the pattern later named Hansen Strand Commonality™. I formulated it as a theory in 1998, when it turned around a failing service contract, and it has been applied and refined through each technology wave since. What is new is where we are pointing it. Today Hansen Procurement Technologies is bringing that proven method to the problem so many organizations now face, the stalled AI pilot, with pilot rescue: give us one stalled pilot, and in two weeks you’ll know where you stand.
What you get in two weeks
We work on one pilot, not your whole portfolio, and we deliver three answers:
There are no new systems to install, no IT involvement and no disruption to the pilot. We work alongside it, not inside your technology.
How we find the cause
A complete risk inventory for AI can run to hundreds of factors, and each one can look fine in its own review. Pilots don’t usually stall because one factor fails. They stall where a few factors cross, at what we call the seams: an approver measured on cost when the decision needs speed, an AI agent recommending a supplier it has no capacity data on, an order nobody has the authority to stop once the cutoff passes.
You can’t find those crossings by mapping forward from a plan, because the plan doesn’t show them. So we start from the one result that didn’t arrive and trace backward. The trail shows which handful of factors caused it, and who can act on each one.
You can’t map forward what you can’t explain. Trace it back first.
Where the method comes from
The method has a long lineage:
Sixty seconds to find out
We’ve built a short self-check: five simple questions about the pilot you’re least sure of. Each one is designed to tap into the historical archive behind ARA™ RAM 2025™: nearly two decades of documented cases in which initiatives stalled at the same seams. It takes sixty seconds, and it tells you whether you’re looking at a pilot that’s on track, one showing warning signs, or one that has stalled.
Write to us at HPT@HansenProcurement.com, and we’ll send it to you.
Related: Most AI Pilots Don’t Fail. They Stall. Here’s Why We Built Something for That. · Risks Are Owned in Silos. They Do Damage Together.
Truth Is Believing. Accuracy Is Knowing. Outcome Is Proof.™
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