Finally, it is easy to misuse review groups. The company had established the phase review process years earlier when they were consistently missing delivery schedules. These problems, however, had long since been resolved but no one had reassessed the process. This was one reason that product development schedules were so long. This story also has a more general lesson.
Bureaucratic behavior is normal, even in small organizations.
Almost any process can become bureaucratic if it is not properly managed. The key is to ensure that all the organization's processes focus on clearly-defined business objectives. Once staff groups begin to view the process as the objective, they start to act bureaucratically. Make sure that every process has measured and aggressive improvement goals. As long as these goals address customer-relevant issues like product quality, cost, or delivery, the processes will likely stay effective.