Scenario set and rotation record
The adversarial scenarios, their authors, dates, and which variant each session used.
Procurement stress test
Evaluate a candidate system before money moves by making frontline personnel run adversarial scenarios, with hard disqualifiers that outrank any composite score.
- 1 Evidence acts here
- 2 Authority
- 3 Decision
- 4 Consequence
- 5 Challenge
- 6 Reconsideration
- 7 Correction
Where it acts
At Evidence, one of the seven stages every consequential decision passes through. Before money moves, frontline staff run adversarial scenarios, so the case for using the system rests on what they saw.
Steps
Put the mechanism in motion
5 steps, in order. Check each one off as it is done; the records below show the work was done.
0 of 5 steps complete
Records this mechanism keeps
What a team running this mechanism keeps, and what each record is for.
Threshold register
Every pass threshold with its justification, author, and review condition.
Evaluation labor statement
Who ran the evaluation, how long, who covered their duties, and what was skipped when staff could not be spared.
Projection-to-measurement ledger
Each evaluation projection, its post-deployment measurement, and the review condition connecting them.
Reuse-ready snippets
Copy policy, audit, and incident language
Use these snippets in requirements, audits, and postmortems with the mechanism permalink.
Policy requirement
Policy requirement (MEC-25 Procurement stress test) - A candidate system is evaluated through live adversarial scenarios run by frontline personnel, not through vendor-controlled demonstrations. - Disqualifier findings recorded by the personnel who observed them trigger the disqualification; a committee may not downgrade an observed occurrence without a recorded reason. - Every threshold in the evaluation carries its justification, its author, and a review condition. - The evaluation states the labor it consumes and who bears it. - Projections made at evaluation time are bound to post-deployment measurement by a review condition. Reference: https://ethotechnics.org/mechanisms/patterns/procurement-stress-test
Product requirement
Product requirement (MEC-25) - The vendor receives the scenario classes, not the scenario contents, and the rotating set is held by the evaluator. - An evaluation artifact records each occurrence observed, the labor spent observing it, and the disqualifier decision.
Audit evidence checklist
Audit evidence checklist (MEC-25) [ ] Scenario set exists, with authorship dates preceding vendor shortlisting. [ ] Each threshold carries its evidence and a named author. [ ] Evaluation labor is stated: roles, duration, backfill. [ ] Redline findings are recorded by observers, not summarized by committee. [ ] Every projection has a named post-deployment counterpart and review condition.
Postmortem trigger
Postmortem trigger (MEC-25) Trigger review when a system admitted through the evaluation shows a burden pattern the evaluation projected would not occur, or when a redline finding was downgraded without a recorded reason.
How it plays out
A clinical system passes procurement on a scripted demonstration with clean data and a cooperative chart. The stress-test version ingests a chart with two conflicting allergy entries and a stale insurance policy, then issues a corrected biopsy result after staging is complete. The correction requires eleven manual steps across four screens, performed by a physician who is not paid for the time. The scripted demo scored 92. The redline fires on unlogged friction, on the observer's record rather than the committee's summary.
Anti-patterns
Common failure cases and counterfactuals
Each case passes on paper and fails in operation. The counterfactual shows what would have worked.
The rehearsed demo
A vendor-controlled demonstration with clean data and cooperative staff is accepted as evidence the system works.
Counterfactual: Live adversarial scenarios with dirty data, run by the personnel who will use the system.
Exception: A demo is a performance. The question is what the system does when the data contradicts itself.
Thresholds without provenance
Pass marks are set after the first vendor is known, or are cited as if they were measurements.
Counterfactual: Every threshold carries its evidence, its author, and a review condition, recorded before shortlisting.
Exception: Criteria fitted to the answer wanted are the gate-as-rubber-stamp failure of the admission gate.
Diagnostics for this mechanism
Tools that size the risk this mechanism addresses.
Diagnostic
Delegation audit
Walks a team through one workflow against six questions and returns an exposure score, the permissions nobody can justify, and whether its decisions can be undone. Start here when the system keeps no decision records yet; use the record conformance checker once it does.
Cite this page · v1.2.1 · updated Oct 6, 2026 · CC BY-SA 4.0
APA
Ethotechnics Institute. (2026). Procurement stress test (MEC-25). Ethotechnics Institute. https://ethotechnics.org/mechanisms/patterns/procurement-stress-test
MLA
Ethotechnics Institute. "Procurement stress test (MEC-25)." Ethotechnics Institute, 2026, https://ethotechnics.org/mechanisms/patterns/procurement-stress-test.
Chicago
Ethotechnics Institute. "Procurement stress test (MEC-25)." Ethotechnics Institute. Oct 6, 2026. https://ethotechnics.org/mechanisms/patterns/procurement-stress-test.
BibTeX
@misc{mechanism_procurement-stress-test,
title={Procurement stress test (MEC-25)},
author={Ethotechnics Institute},
year={2026},
howpublished={Ethotechnics Institute},
url={https://ethotechnics.org/mechanisms/patterns/procurement-stress-test},
version={v1.2.1}
}
RIS
TY - WEB TI - Procurement stress test (MEC-25) AU - Ethotechnics Institute PY - 2026 UR - https://ethotechnics.org/mechanisms/patterns/procurement-stress-test ER -