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- Why software development slows to a crawl: Software organizations don’t slow down because people stop caring. They slow down because responsibility diffuses across owners, reviewers, and committees, while the work required to push anything forward grows heavier each quarter. The challenge for leaders is to continuously tune governance so that clarity and speed increase together. ... Teams fall into a trap where a once-useful rule becomes a tradition, then a barrier. When someone asks why a particular approval exists, the answer becomes circular: because that’s our process. Good governance adapts to current needs, not historical ones. For every process gate, someone should articulate what specific risk it mitigates and what would happen without it. If the answer is “we’ve always done it this way,” the gate needs reevaluation. The most successful engineering cultures build in mechanisms for process retirement. Any new process comes with an expiration date. After six or 12 months, the rule is automatically retired unless someone actively argues for renewal with data showing its necessity. Every rule must have a documented owner and a one-sentence justification. If the current team cannot state the why, the process should be retired.
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Last modified 26 January 2026