[than3]

Well structural issues will almost always cause suffering regardless of if its software, or management/organizational. They are all systems, and antipatterns creep-in sometimes regardless of how good you may happen to be. Flexibility is what makes or breaks things.

If you can't get a good handle on the specific business requirements, or lack the power to enact necessary changes; any solution is going to be a poor approximation and potentially cause negative production value with someone.

Imo, Products are just a collection of processes that fulfill requirements. Documenting those processes and requirements is 80% of the battle, most of the issues I've run into were only issues because they weren't documented (i.e. edge-cases that are surprisingly common).

Many times, the people and processes involved don't share/get documented because they often view this implicit knowledge as job security. This often takes a really rare/gifted person with knowledge in both IT and psychology to get what you need.