Really great essay. I think what it often boils down to with this stuff is that idea of “social capital” you mention. Having that level of trust in place between the dev team and “The Business” and being able to set expectations about delivery dates being predicated not only on the solution being delivered, but the solution being delivered without accruing technical debt to hit arbitrary deadlines. Frequent demos can really help in this area, even if they’re intrinsically technical — having transparency of the development effort (technology stack, non-functional requirements etc) can work wonders!