Comment by tristor

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.