Costs of coordination

Generally, coordination is a good thing with a net-benefit. It ensures people are informed and working together, rather than against each other.

However, this coordination comes with a cost as well. Even in the best case scenario, time spent on communication takes away from time spent working the actual problem.

In the worst case, being overly rigid and sticking to a coordination process that is ill-adapted to the situation at hand actively causes friction.

Laura Maguire writes about this in the ACM Queue article Managing the Hidden Costs of Coordination.