AFAIR, the original idea of having silos came from Sloan/GM. Originally the groups were organized by function to reduce costs and streamline production. Say motors, wheels, windshields, etc. But this created problems because the end product lines didn't have much power over these groups. Some of these groups even became defiant as they were in high demand so they played the different product lines against each other.<p>The solution was to integrate vertically from the end product lines. So each of Chevrolet/Pontiac/Cadillac/Buick would have its dedicated teams for all it's neededs. No more delays and innovation was much faster. This turned GM from a mess to beating Ford.<p>The problem is this was seen as the ultimate organizational structure and Business Schools love magic recipes.<p>But I've seen the same problems in IT companies with massive Dev, QA, Production teams who end up antagonizing. Prom passive aggression (e.g. delaying approvals) to the occasional openly sabotaging (e.g. approving faulty releases). From experience, QA drifts into being the most political, Dev drifts into carelessness, and Production/Ops ends up over-reacting. This can be solved by integrating vertically.<p>But there is no silver bullet in organizational structures. There are many factors like culture, what's the product/service, the size of the organization, the geographical distribution of the teams and organization, and what kind of company it is (e.g. lean vs. moonshot).