In many software companies I have seen powerpoints replace design documents and technical solutions. The most recent case I came across was in a company which needed to improve product quality and reduce testing time. As an engineer, to me thats a simple problem of doing automated testing (there is only partial automation at this point). That should be simple as the product is actually a library.
But then the testing team decides that "we have a problem that needs to be solved". It starts of as slides with "vision" with "goals" and how to achieve it we need to develop "critical thinking" and have "better recruitment practices" and what not. Now the ppt is about 50 slides with all kinds of zen pictures and 1 bullet buried inside saying we need automated tests. After a few more reviews it will be presented to the entire organization as "strategy" document.
Such overwrought, content-free PowerPoint presentations have their place: Hell.
Maybe the problem could be averted if the presentations were replaced with short articles, like blog posts. It would be hard to do worse than what you've described.
I have generally found simple text files to be most effective in actually solving problems. The moment it moves to richer formats, some amount of mental bandwidth is taken up by the presentation aspect.
We have a pdf of slides with mockups and detailed specs for our product. Each page - a slide. Each facet of functionality - a set of slides. Each step and interaction a user can go through - a slide. As a visual reference for implementation, it makes life a lot easier than reading pages of textual specs, so it can definitely be useful.
On the other hand, this is not exactly the common powerpoint presentation, it's just a a deck of specs passed around in that format, so not the same thing at all in the end.
I was sitting in a meeting with my then-manager once, watching an elaborate PowerPoint complete with animation and he turned to me and said, if anyone working for me made something like this I'd fire them for wasting time.
But then the testing team decides that "we have a problem that needs to be solved". It starts of as slides with "vision" with "goals" and how to achieve it we need to develop "critical thinking" and have "better recruitment practices" and what not. Now the ppt is about 50 slides with all kinds of zen pictures and 1 bullet buried inside saying we need automated tests. After a few more reviews it will be presented to the entire organization as "strategy" document.