Having a standardized process across the organization forces process design to accommodate the lowest common denominator. It also takes a larger effort and time for the organization to be able to pivot and adjust to move as one entity because of the critical mass. From a people perspectives, employees feel like there a cog in the wheel and they're not motivated to improve how they work because they believe it is a big bureaucratic exercise (which it usually is in large organizations) that "other" people have bestowed down on them. This standardization comes at a huge cost for productivity and efficiency within the majority of the product groups.
Giving product groups (and teams) autonomy empowers them figure out the best way for them to work as smaller units to optimize productivity and efficiency. Smaller teams can have shorter feedback loops and can inspect and adapt more frequently and progress more quickly. Smaller scope for process design allows them to optimize more precisely because it is based on a smaller set of skills, expertise, team makeup, and particular product/technology.
From the people perspective, giving the individuals autonomy to define how they work, how to best optimize their own work leads to higher morale, motivation, and productivity. Even when the technology changes over time, giving the autonomy at the smallest reasonable unit allows them to rapidly go through and adopt the change quicker. It also allows each product group (and teams) inspect/adapt/change at the rate that is within their threshold and within the context of their business needs.
Autonomy is one of the factors a motivation that Daniel Pink talks about in his book Drive. I think we can all agree that we want to motivated workforce.
The downside of that autonomy is that the operations of the organization becomes less transparent. Or simply, make it more complex to be able to see if your organization is moving forward.
Can you marry the two to get the best of both worlds? In my experience, YES!