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There are several failure modes I see from lack of big picture thinking: - A system is left running for years even though we no longer need it as a business. M

There are several failure modes I see from lack of big picture thinking: - A system is left running for years even though we no longer need it as a business. Millions of dollars wasted because no one had a ticket for "think about whether we still need system X" so no one thought about it. (This one happens a LOT, oh my lord.) - Two teams solving the same problem in different ways. They each hit their goals and people get promoted and so forth. But the business ends up silently paying double, and we all have to deal we extra cognitive overhead from the redundancy, which slows us down. - Excessively manual processes. People clock in and fix support issues all day instead of re-engineering the thing to be more automated and self-service. But again, everyone's doing their tasks as specified, promotions all around.

pixl97 4y ago
As a support person I see this happen often when a new feature is implemented to an existing product, typically something a customer requests. The feature works, it passes all test we throw at it, and then when out in the field the product breaks down in unexpected ways because the developers/product managers/big thinkers use the product doesn't match how the customer uses the product. Functionally sound by itself but fails as a system. The issues are generally obvious from a systematic view, but when each person is face first at a different part of the elephant they'll all say their piece is working.