Low-level software engineers are all afraid to push the STOP button. They slightly softball their estimates, the impacts of their bugs, etc. Their supervisors soften it up just a bit more before reporting to their management. (This is all done via a byzantine tangle of Excel "project trackers" stored 7 folders deep on various Sharepoint sites.)
At the weekly meeting where the managers update on progress, they do a little bit more nerfing of the seriousness. They have faith the dates will be met, so all Criticals become Majors or even Minors. Majors become Minor or Warning.
Someone at the very top will get this shipped. They have no time to hear about failures, they want only Solutions. There are no Problems, only Opportunities. The wider employee base gets to attend monthly meetings with Powerpoints that show how "We're updating our Culture for a new Paradigm". What they take away from these meetings is to keep your head down and don't get in the way of The Paradigm Shift.
Only when the rubber meets the road (literally!) is all this exposed.
[0]Insert company here.
We’ll never get it but I would love to look, in forensic detail, at the process that led to allowing the car out the door. Somewhere there is a deck or comparable vehicle where software was moved from red to yellow. I just cannot imagine taking this kind of brand and quality risk with such a key model. Massive organizational failure.