Comment by bluefirebrand

> Most of the most painfully over-engineered swamp projects I've dealt with have been a result of not understanding the requirements.

For me it's been a complete lack of requirements. Absolutely no one in the company seeming to want to make a firm decision on what we're building right at the moment. Every decision coming with a hedge "but maybe we might want to do this sometime later so we should keep our options open"

So any time there was a tradeoff we would take the option that leaves our options open, which takes way more time and effort to get right