In software, all that is hidden from the end customer. How do you look for the smart choices in code made by the team who implemented any of the software you download and install?
If your solution is the best compromise, it is more likely to be selected.
- product must be purchased because its vendor is somehow connected to the upper management or the investor
- product must be purchased because the person who has chosen the product is at the moment perceived as having some kind of holy cow status and can't be criticized, so people around put that to the extreme
Happening at most of companies everywhere.
All the examples you provided miss the point. Revenues are the point; all the rest is ancillary at best.
Not necessarily. Some otherwise good systems might have one bug in each of those categories.
And, most other poorly designed and poorly executed systems just chug along fine without the customer realising anything.
That's not the norm though and I hope we can all acknowledge that.