Comment by Joel_Mckay

In general, bad design patterns and team management are the primary drivers for sick projects.

"[O]rganizations which design systems (in the broad sense used here) are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations." (Melvin E. Conway)

Keep in mind Conway's law also works in reverse, try running a private project wiki with documentation, and a ticket/task queue with small tasks.

Setting pie-in-sky project goals is just as bad as ivory tower engineers. =3