Last night while talking to Raz I recommended he work for my former employer in London. The reason I'd recommend working for them is that they seem to have got the critical balance between rigid process and operational flexibility in software development about right. We hit every deadline and included all the features we promised more or less as specified, every release. That's really refreshing in the software business!
It got me thinking about why this isn't more common. The thing is, it's not getting the development process brings the biggest (business) rewards. My employer before that (name left as an exercise to the reader) was the direct opposite, running about as seat-of-the-pants as is possible to imagine. They're at least as successful, possibly more so at this point, and yet they pushed out daily releases that broke, crashed, looked like shit and had the worst imaginable user interface.
Given that getting the process right doesn't guarantee Bubble Goo rewards. So as a PHB, why would you bother to make the process perfect? The only advantage is happier employees, and what PHB gives a rat's arse about that?