Editing to add that this did fit one thing I concluded (before learning economists found it to be obvious): diffuse risks almost never get handled. Only sharp, tangible risks really get thought about.
"We had an outage" can lead to someone getting sacked, so fear prevails. But "we slowly strangle ourselves to death and then get eaten by a nimble upstart" is nobody's risk. It's invisible and immeasurable.
I don't think small-team agile is particularly immune to this problem. It just tends to have a smaller surface area for diffuse global risks.
Editing to add that this did fit one thing I concluded (before learning economists found it to be obvious): diffuse risks almost never get handled. Only sharp, tangible risks really get thought about.
"We had an outage" can lead to someone getting sacked, so fear prevails. But "we slowly strangle ourselves to death and then get eaten by a nimble upstart" is nobody's risk. It's invisible and immeasurable.
I don't think small-team agile is particularly immune to this problem. It just tends to have a smaller surface area for diffuse global risks.