> Of course, this would not be the fault of the individuals who maintain the software, who are often brilliant: it's just simply not fair to expect individuals to ensure this consistency using their own, ad-hoc processses

I think this is a little generous. Engineers of all stripes should take responsibility for their work. If they say, "Yes I can add methylation analysis in three weeks," then they should make sure that means it's made well, with tests and all. I've definitely encountered people who don't communicate the scale of the task, and for most of them it's because they don't do software engineering; they do informatics scripting.