Cisco

I'd like to think that I understood the corporate strategy for areas of technological expansion.

Some good centralized initiatives for creating a better engineering organization, with encouraging videos from different parts of the organization.

The message isn't getting through to lower-level managers, who appear to be much more concerned with arbitrary customer deadlines than improving their ability to deliver software reliably.

Many have noted the onerous demands of the centralized bureaucracy on individuals and teams, particularly the Open Source legal compliance processes.

If you really want to have a more responsive and effective engineering organization:

• Incentivize lower-level managers to focus on cross-functional teams (really have different skill sets sit next to each other) and continuous delivery practices to make work more enjoyable and reduce waste in the value stream.
• Dedicate significant resources to automating organizational processes, such as Open Source legal compliance.
• Restrict the product roadmap for a period to enable the above. You have a choice of short-term pain or long-term pain. The default choice is the latter.