In too many programming organizations, every time there's a design debate, nobody ever manages to make a decision, usually for political reasons. So the programmers only work on uncontroversial stuff. As time goes on, all the hard decisions are pushed to the end. These projects are the most likely to fail.
From the Book Joel on Software, 2004, ISBN 1590593898
Copyright © 2004 by Joel Spolsky
No. 204