When you work on a large scale problem you WANT to get a consensus of the large picture first, and that's why whiteboard is so handy. We don't jump straight into implementation since it's very often trivial and it's always much easier to improve and refactor implementation than the design/interface of a system itself.

Yes, I agree with you. My point was that software engineering is unique in that they are the ones who end up building the implementation. Automotive engineers never touch the implementation. Their only product is the design, schematics, and blueprints.