In almost 20 years of working in FinTech at various banks, hedge funds startup etc, a lot of this rings true.

e.g.

- Critical path/flow diagrams [0] are incredibly useful for both laying out what has to happen in serial vs what can be parallelized. That being said, I've almost NEVER seen them used and 90% of the time they are used it's b/c I made one

- SO many important processes are not documented so people can't even opine about how to fix them. I once documented a process and everyone agreed step 4 was wrong. What was amazing is no one agreed on what step 4 actually was.

- Most of the big arguments I've seen about projects are less "what should we do" but more "when do we want it" e.g. one party want's it next week but another one wants to have more features so it will take longer. [1] I've often dealt with this by using the following metaphor:

"Oh, so you want to move house every two weeks?

If you give me six months I'll build you the world's most amazing Winnebago/RV with a hot tub, satellite TV, queen size bed and A/C.

If you want it tomorrow I'm going to give you a wheelbarrow, pillow and an iPad."

0 - https://www.howtomakesenseofanymess.com/chapter3/67/2-flow-d... and https://www.howtomakesenseofanymess.com/chapter3/71/6-swim-l...

1- https://www.howtomakesenseofanymess.com/chapter3/51/reality-...

How to make sense of any mess