This is really interesting to me because my previous job had a big project, and they started writing down the documentation up front with the goal of specifying everything and getting it all reviewed and signed off. Years later everyone panicked because the documentation was still in progress and nothing had been implemented.

Perhaps the missing sauce was a good systems engineer advising the bosses? How do successful projects avoid this sort of problem? Is it common? It was really frustrating to be a contributor knowing that the whole thing was a disaster but not knowing if your ideas to make things better were useful or a waste of time, even if you could get anyone to listen.