In our previous articles on 6 GenAI spend traps, we covered the common ways organisations leak money on GenAI, and provided deeper-dives on model routing and hybrid pipelines.

This article focuses on Spend Trap #3: pilot overload.

Unlike the previous two traps (which are primarily technical), this one is mostly about organisational patterns. The cost impact is just as real, though. A fair warning up front: much of the advice below may be familiar - but GenAI has exacerbated these issues where good processes aren't already in place.

The typical pattern: someone builds a proof-of-concept in a week, shows it to stakeholders, gets positive feedback, declares victory, and...the pilot runs indefinitely. Meanwhile, three other teams start similar pilots because they don't know the first one exists.

Six months later, you've got 47 GenAI pilots, 12 different tech stacks, zero production systems, and a growing sense that perhaps we've spent rather a lot of money exploring things.