The article does not seem to be telling us what is the cause of this difficulty to change anything. Is it maybe the quality of the existing solutions that makes it very difficult to change them? I, personally, am inclined to blame the 'technical debt' philosophy. If you never clean up your messes, things will go slower and slower and slower. Also, the mythical man month comes to mind 'add more people to a project and it will take longer'. The biggest problem of too many people being that knowledge becomes increasingly fragmented. So, one should have fewer people than one actually needs in order to make sure that they have enough knowledge.