This is one part of the issue. The other major piece of this that I've seen over more than two decades in industry is that most large projects are started by and run by (but not necessarily the same person) non-technical people who are exercising political power, rather than by technical people who can achieve the desired outcomes. When you put the nexus of power into the hands of non-technical people in a technical endeavor you end up with outcomes that don't match expectations. Larger scale projects deeply suffering from "not knowing what we don't know" at the top.

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mbesto a day ago | parent | next [-]

If this were true all of the time then the fix would be simple - only have technical people in charge. My experience has shown that this (only technical people in charge) doesn't solve the problem.

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tristor a day ago | parent | next [-]

Success pretty much requires putting technical people in charge, but that doesn't mean putting technical people in charge is sufficient for success to happen. We have plenty of data over the last 40 years to prove my case. Furthermore, unfortunately, what it means to be a "technical person" is not so simple to define, unfortunately as the easy ways to codify it often exclude the very people who you want involved.

Suffice to say, projects are significantly more likely to succeed when the power in the project is held by people who are competent /and/ understand the systems they are working with /and/ understand the problem domain you are developing a solution in. Whether or not they have a title like "engineer" or have a technical degree, or whatever other hallmark you might choose is largely irrelevant. What matters is competency and understanding, and then ultimately accountability.

Most large projects I've been a part of or near lacked all three of these things, and thus were fundamentally doomed to failure before they ever began. The people in power lacked competency and understanding, the entire project team and the people in power lacked accountability, and competency was unevenly distributed amongst the project team.

It may feel pithy, but it really is true that in many large projects the fundamental issue that leads to failure is that the decision makers don't know what they're doing and most of the implementers are incompetent. We can always root cause further to identify the incentive structures in society, and particularly in public/government projects that lead to this being true, but the fact remains at the project level this is the largest problem in my observation.

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mbesto 7 hours ago | parent [-]

> Success pretty much requires putting technical people in charge, but that doesn't mean putting technical people in charge is sufficient for success to happen.

This statement is terribly incongruent.

	▲	tristor 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> This statement is terribly incongruent In what way? A condition being required but not sufficient for success is a perfectly logical statement.

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fragmede a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If people didn’t work, maybe we should put an LLM in charge instead.

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chileRick a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Boeing has entered the chat

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cjbgkagh a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sometimes giving people what they want can be bad for them; management wants cheap compliant workers, management gets cheap compliant workers, and then the projects fall apart in easily predictable and preventable ways.

Because such failures are so common management typically isn’t punished when they do so it’s hard to keep interests inline. And because many producers are run on a cost plus basis there can be a perverse incentive to do a bad job, or at least avoid doing a good one.

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smokel a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean with "technical people" but it seems that you may not appreciate the problems that "non-technical people" try to tackle.

Do your two decades of experience cover both sides?

	▲	mring33621 a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		"you may not appreciate the problems that 'non-technical people' try to tackle." Do you mean the problem of wanting to build something without knowing how/having the skills, to build something?
	▲	tristor a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Do your two decades of experience cover both sides? Yes. I appreciate both sides and have a wealth of experience in both. The challenge is that all the non-technical problems cannot be solved successfully while lacking a technical understanding. Projects generally don't fail for technical reasons, they fail because they were not set up for success, and that starts with having a clear understanding of requirements, feasibility, and a solid understanding of both the current state and the path to reach your desired outcomes, both politically/financially and technically. I was an engineer for more than a decade, I've been in Product for nearly a decade, and I'm now a senior manager in Product. I can honestly say that I have the necessary experience to hold strong opinions here and to be correct in those opinions. You need technical people who can also handle some of the non-technical aspects of a project with the reins of power if you want the project to succeed, otherwise it is doomed by the lack of understanding and competency of those in charge.