For years, many of us watched the ISG organization abandon the very disciplines required to build successful enterprise software. Some spoke up. Most stayed silent. Leadership either didn't listen or simply didn't care.
Now the bill has finally come due.
Products are being shut down. Teams are being eliminated. Many good people are paying the price—not because they failed, but because leadership failed them.
This wasn't bad luck.
This wasn't "market conditions."
This wasn't AI.
This was years of poor execution, weak leadership, and a culture that stopped holding itself accountable.
Engineering operated without meaningful deadlines. Roadmaps became wish lists instead of commitments. Deliverables slipped quarter after quarter with few, if any, consequences.
Product Management became meaningless. Engineering dictated schedules and features it repeatedly failed to meet. The competition, with 1/10th the resources, moved three to five times faster in their velocities. Customers were promised capabilities that never materialized. Eventually leadership stopped publishing roadmaps altogether because they had lost all credibility.
None of this should surprise anyone. When an organization rewards excuses instead of execution, failure becomes inevitable. When commitments mean nothing, customers eventually notice. When accountability disappears, poor quality follows. When mediocrity is tolerated long enough, it becomes the culture.
No engineering organization succeeds without discipline. No product organization succeeds without accountability. No enterprise software company succeeds when deadlines become optional and execution becomes negotiable. The market eventually exposes every weakness that leadership chooses to ignore.
That's exactly what happened.
Companies the size of Dell don't fail overnight. They fail one missed commitment, one ignored warning, one delayed release, and one poor leadership decision at a time.
Eventually, reality always wins. The bill has finally come due.