Management. Front line dev managers I find all share common characteristics: 1. They are tech illiterate and are afraid of being found out. They use aggressive anger to avoid getting into a technical discussion. 2. Are actually trying to hinder and slow down development. Being in charge is all that matters, and fast progress does not contribute to that goal. 3. They enforce common denominator 20 year old technology not so they can hire more easily, but because they have no basis for judging modern technology and can't politically handle making a wrong decision. 4. They will make a project crawl because they and the three levels of management above them are simply there to collect money for as long as possible before they rotate themselves around to "new" projects.

Projects are slowed down by these tactics:

- Heavyweight code review process with very large teams and lots of conflict

- Unscheduled meetings if things start happening too quickly.

- Using methodology to limit the scope of developer work.

- If things get too out of control, rotate and reassign developers every few months.