The implementation was kept so secret that it caught Dave Cutler,
then working on DEC's next-generation operating system and chips, by
surprise when it debuted at a Board Meeting in Maynard,
Massachusetts.   Shortly after that board meeting Mr. Cutler left
Digital and moved (with some of his team) to Microsoft.

Do you think that was just the straw that broke the camel's back?  

Actually, Cutler was already in trouble with management because of the Prism project.  Prism was the first try at building a RISC machine (this was in the 1985-1986 time frame) and it was managed by Dave Cutler.  Unfortunately, Dave was not a good administrator.  He was doing a very bad job of managing the project and doing a very bad job of keeping management up to date on what was going on.  Finally, management cancelled Prism and that is when they decided to go with the MIPS architecture.

Dave was trying to rehabilitate himself but the DECStation 3100 basically yanked the rug from under him -- among other things.

The adoption of the MIPS architecture caused a lot of grumbling and unhappiness with the troops because of the NIH factor.

This in turn allowed Bob Palmer and others to push for a new try at a RISC architecture and thus the Alpha was born. 

Unfortunately, Alpha took up a lot of resources (hardware design, software, semiconductor) that should have been used elsewhere - e.g., Concentrate of MIPS for high end and intel or motorola for the low end, Ultrix instead of OSF, etc.  The Hudson facility (along with disk drives) was a real money sink.   Bob Palmer came from the manufacturing side and I think he loathed dismantling DECs vertical integration.  When the board of directors told him to preserve shareholder equity, he then started to sell off pieces of the company which started dismantling the vertical integration.  But then it was too late.

-David