I think a large part of the problem is over-specialization. Once you have groups with a leader that are in charge of [something] narrow, they start trying to m

I think a large part of the problem is over-specialization. Once you have groups with a leader that are in charge of [something] narrow, they start trying to make [something] more important, more complex, etc, than it should be. For various reasons...exposure for career progression, empire building, etc. Then, when you need to get something from an idea into production, you're dealing with some large number of these groups. All of which have some form of demand management (jira tickets or similar), some form of requirements you have to meet, different ways of interaction, and so on. And, some of those groups have to work with other groups to do "task a" that you asked for. So you get this complicated dependency graph of tasks that's not even visible to you.