[csydas]

Death by committee is a real thing and it is a problem you need to architect around, but the answer to this is not to consolidate power. Instead, you build up a structure and system by which decisions can be made and a process that all members must abide by. If the core persons (the values of the bus factor) are unwilling to subject themselves to such a system and to work to design such a system, then the project will fail eventually under them, or it simply isn't such a great project.

Implementing such systems is absolutely a challenge as there is negative feedback to such things all the time; designing such a system, putting persons in place whose job it is to enforce the process, putting persons in place to weigh in on if an action or decision matches the letter and spirit of the process, all of this take a lot of discipline and maturity from the participating members; I've done this with several orgs now, and even with backing from the VP level, at best I get belligerent participants, and truly I cannot tell if their resistance is that they don't like the decisions we make, or if they just don't understand the process and want the ability to complain to someone directly.

Most of the issues you get with multiple stakeholders is because of a lack of discipline within the org; people who are too used to "just doing things" without really considering the full consequences of actions in favor of just doing what they want. You see this in basically every collective project, not just programming projects too. I consider it a win if we have people begrudgingly participating, but ultimately participating.

[wayoutthere]

> I've done this with several orgs now, and even with backing from the VP level, at best I get belligerent participants, and truly I cannot tell if their resistance is that they don't like the decisions we make, or if they just don't understand the process and want the ability to complain to someone directly.

The belligerence is that there’s very little benefit career-wise to being a good committee member on low-visibility committees. At best you get some nominal recognition, and at worst it’s a distraction from the things that actually do further your career. Nobody gets a gold star for that kind of work, but you do get big promotions when you can own chunks of work yourself (even when done poorly).