I think it gets to be worse as people move away from conventional business logic to "Agile". Conventional business logic tends to go and chase the highest ROI first, and to remove the biggest crisis / break points / bottlenecks in order of benefit.
In "agile" (which is the norm for the sort of IT work I tend to do) - its all about vague, unconnected tasks that each unconnected person completes that somehow, magically, through a combination of all of them being done, does something bigger than the sum of its parts.
It works in software development, but when you're trying to solve a business problem that isn't related to software (say... responding to an audit from a government body) - it tanks productivity and was ultimately one of the reasons I chose to take my redundancy - because that work environment wasn't productive.
Sounds like your way is, and it should be :) Always helps if someone knows what the fuck is going on, right?