i worked on software like this as a contractor for ausDoD. The same shitty companies who were big enough to sue would get awarded contracts over and over again even though nothing they ever delivered was on time, budget or worked. Accenture didnt even have programmers, they were hire buisness grads and give them crash courses on writing software. so whatever was delivered, would need another billion dollar project to replace it. why? its a massive bureaucracy, where everyone is covering everyone elses ass, everyone is fighting for budgets that they will do anything to protect. 90% famine until the last month, when its a feast and all the desicions get made, because if they dont spend it, they loose it.

The reason why this is changing is not because its a light-bulb moment, its because its taken this long for the people up the chain to backed into a corner. Eric Smitch isnt the first person to think of this, his the first person with high enough clout to get it done (on a micro-level).

suffice to say, working in such a environment is toxic for your career in software development. unless u want to work on these secret networks all your life, on the same software, maintaining it, its just a dead end. Want to use that new web tech? Nup. The SoE takes years to update, you still need to support IE8 for the next decade.

Disclosure: I work for Pivotal in R&D.

Somebody once also said that planning is still very useful even if the plan changes later because it helps those involved prepare for and understand the changes better when they do come.

When push comes to shove, if you give people cool tech, unless it's easy to mindlessly pick up and use they won't use it. When I was in, I had boxes and boxes of crap that was on the books that we never used (and didn't know how to use but had to inventory), then the stuff we actually used.