I worked for a company where lots of managers and executives wanted to have their say.
Product managers, purchasing department, sales, finance and of course the top-executives.
They got the product ready more or less on time.
When it was introduced on the market, demand exploded and in a positive way.
They made hundreds of millions of dollars.
Based on that, the endless meetings, the revisions, the compromises had all been worth it, right ?
Not really.
The writing had been on the wall from day one.
The product looked ok on the outside.
However, they had been using cheap and low quality electronic components that stopped working after xxx hours.
And they had problems with the grounding, due to a low-cost design decision.
That made matters worse because it damaged other components.
They ended up replacing the components of the circuit boards and rewriting the software.
They did up to 3 retakes. It was crazy expensive.
And don't think for a second that was the end of it.
The customers were leasing the product and they had a purchase option after 3 years.
Guess what they ended up doing ?
Some no longer wanted the product and some negotiated the price down.
The entire company took a huge loss, a restructuring took place, the division was shut down, people were fired, some were moved to another division, the CEO was replaced and yeah, fast forward : it's not done yet ...
Lesson learned: Cross-team communication is necessary and productive, but you've got to know who to listen to.