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Organizations that are low in maturity are characterized by weak processes, frequent and unexpected failures, lots of manual work, and low automation. As a result, teams do not trust each other and tend to find work arounds. They find ways to replicate the work that legitimately belongs in a different team. This provides a few benefits: it provides an illusion of speed, it gets things done, and reduces dependencies/aggravation. When you are working on the solution, you feel good and you don’t have time to whine and complain. Besides, you can always blame the other guy if things don’t work out. A key design principle is, “low coupling means failures are not spread to other systems.”

But it has a huge side effect: this behavior creates silos and duplicate effort; these become turfs to defend when a more scalable solution is proposed. It deepens mistrust, which begins to approach animosity over time.

Yes, low coupling is good for reducing risk. But higher coupling and synergy go together. It takes more work, it takes a few paradigm shifts, and change is hard for some people.

Think long term. Do things the right way, even if it takes time.