I don't think you can quite call these patterns of failure mistakes.

They are effective, reliable way to get certain things up and running in a given time frame and in a decentralized fashion. If you have limited resources and need to have things working in that time frame, decentralized services can be the right decision even if they give you problems later.

Further, being a fairly reliable way to do things, they have appeal even if your time frame is far enough ahead to see the problems.

I did not explain myself well, I was thinking in a more broader sense, including the related project management issues.

Brooks?

Fred Brooks, author of No Silver Bullet[0] which GP is referring to, and the fairly famous Mythical Man Month[1].

[0] http://faculty.salisbury.edu/~xswang/Research/Papers/SERelat...

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Mythical-Man-Month-Engineering-Ann...