I didn't understand the story, it left too much unexplained. Why was a Snr Eng II I'm a leadership role and what did that even mean in context? Technical lead? Team lead? Something was being rolled out to 3 countries a week then slowed to per month... how is that not a success? There aren't that many countries. Unless it started with the North Korean rollout and went downhill from there.

Given the lack of context and information and juxtaposed message, why should we take anything from the authors conclusion on what the problem was? The boxing wizards metaphor is unnecessary for saying "I thought it was a technical issue but it's really a people management problem" and we don't even know that is the case because the article doesn't say why.