I wholly disagree with your criticism of the middle. The original article points to the cause of failure which was dismissal of SMEs prior to deployment. Almost all projects of this size are doomed to complexity overload but that is surmountable, but loss of Product Owners and SMEs is not.
It wasn't sales who decided not to have a SME on the project. They already got paid; why would they worry about personnel? That is a classic middle management decision.
