SNIP
>
>Perhaps you and I have just coincidently observed two opposite ends of the spectrum every time we have been involved in BIG corporate IT projects, but I think your overall premise is pretty flawed and your fact of life is not accurate across the board.

Here's one where you can decide how to classify it...

A large P&C Insurance company with a monstrous and rigorously applied project 'management' practise (purchased) applying from feasibility to post-implementation review. The thing involved "sign-offs" by multiple authorities at each step of extensive documentation prescribed for the steps. It was onerous! On paper it all looked real sound.

The principle was that each step's documents would feed the next. Each step had the essential information to let the principals involved in the next step get moving with their work and provided information letting them 'cut-to-the-quick' for any details they might need to ask about.

In practise the drill was to get the document for the step completed, signed-off, and filed as proof of compliance. Many of the signing authorities simply looked at the volume (inches thickness), proclaimed it too much to read, and signed off as a matter of course. Anyone who questioned any of the content sometimes had the content revised but most often were pressured into signing.
The next step, which SHOULD have involved the worker-bees and their managers READING the prior step's document to glean what they needed, involved those (next step) participants distributing forms to be completed, soliciting the information that was IN THE DOCUMENT in the first place. They typically added a column or something that made their requirement 'beyond' what was in the document. This saved them from having to read the document. Of course those of us who had written the (input) document got POed at such requests but were consistently overruled by meetings between managers.
And, in the end, management imposed implementation dates always superceded completion of QA testing, often just after it was just underway!

So, on the surface, LOTS and LOTS of time and money spent on a perfect system that in theory was marvellous.
In fact it was cumbersome and useless except for 1 critical factor - the senior management could prove to anyone who asked that they had a rigorous project management and control system that any auditor could inspect anytime to see for themselves.

Things often look far better than they turn out to be in fact.

cheers