I recently rediscovered Tom DeMarco's article "Software Engineering: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone?" where he makes an interesting argument that tight control is much more important for a $1M project that yields $1.1M in value vs. a $1M project that yields $50M in value:

"...the more you focus on control, the more likely you're working on a project that's striving to deliver something of relatively minor value."