This seems like an object lesson in making sure that the right hand does not know what the left is doing. Yes, if you have two departments working on two mutually exclusive architectures, one of them will necessarily fail. In exchange, however, you can guarantee that it will be the worse one. This is undervalued as a principle since the wasted labor is more easily measured, and therefore decision making is biased towards it.
I agree with you, but perhaps this is very hard (impossible?) to pull off. Invariably, politics will result in various outcomes being favored in management and the moment that groups realize the game is rigged, the whole fair market devolves into the usual political in-fighting.
