I think that technology disruption is one of the roots of this. I'm talking about minor disruptions like a new GUI library or an improved query algorithm. Diffusion of these is somewhat uneven, and this results, occasionally, in senior management seeing projects that were impossible or very hard in the past suddenly delivering. This makes them believe that other similar projects should also deliver in that way and that if they aren't then something is wrong - leading to a desire to find out what's going on in minute detail.