[meaty]

> The requirement list for a typical enterprise project is the bribe trail.

I think this is purely a stereotype.

The behavior experienced is largely down to the fact that a large body of humans can't come up with a single consistent view of a large set of problems. You need singular control and ownership by someone with technical and business domain expertise. Some of this is politics (particularly from the MBA and psychotic corporate climber faction) but it's at least 80% standard human idiocy and ignorance.

I think from an architecture perspective (I'm an "enterprise architect" [whatever that is] by trade), clean service APIs are a good idea, but not necessarily the distribution model or fully decoupled integration path.