This is always a vicious cycle that starts with good intent but spirals into an oppressive regime. 1) It's starts after the product launch post-mortem 2) Team

This is always a vicious cycle that starts with good intent but spirals into an oppressive regime. 1) It's starts after the product launch post-mortem 2) Team creates a process to improve avoiding future mistakes 3) Process innocently includes ability to hard block any product changes without someone or some group's approval 4) Politics emerges behind the scenes from those with social capital to get around the hard blocks 5) New process to make things "more fair" by adding more hard blocking rules, usually resulting in lots of pointless meetings and paperwork to justify new process and show upper management that things are working as intended 6) More politics as teams start hiring for people who are able to get around the heavy process by being "good at the game" 7) New team is formed around the process because it's now a full time job 8) People good at politics join this new team and everyone else is pulled into pointless meetings and handed paperwork 9) Rinse and repeat The problem I've always observed is that these systems are put in place with the best intent to offer guidance so that company, employees and consumers can all benefit by building the right best thing. However, the systems are given blocking abilities that after time do more damage than good. You'd think, if something were not blocking no one would listen, and maybe you're right. I definitely have no idea how teams can avoid this spiral trap, however, I don't think it's a bad thing to sunset process like this after a while. Just like Google is willing to throw away products on a whim, we should be willing to throw away process teams on a whim.