From my experience of working at Fortune 100's for over 10 years as a senior engineer, I would say I have seen what you described, but rarely if ever are they the architects fault. There are usually just a few of them and usually hundreds of developers constantly shoveling garbage into the codebase. They rely upon processes and such... but they all fall apart in practice.
I've come to the conclusion good is good enough and working is even better. Usually the business agrees.
I've come to the conclusion good is good enough and working is even better. Usually the business agrees.