This explains so many things about software development, consulting shops, and the run of the mill "thinking" that goes into development. I particularly like this (SMF = Software Management Formula):

Like many in the industry when faced with a project running behind schedule, this company's management applied the SMFs to the problem. The SMFs predict that increasing the number of programmers will increase the amount of software produced. So the company went back to the "bodyshop" for more people. The bodyshop naturally was all too happy to add more developers billing by the hour.

The thing is, management theories about development line up in a negative fashion with the desires of consulting firms. The result is a perfect storm of higher spending. Based on what I've seen over the last few years, a lot of the success (in terms of on time delivery) of Smalltalk has to do with its having fallen out of favor - the Smalltalk project tends to get dropped down to a skeleton crew, while the Java/.NET projects get staffed up. Ironically, that helps the Smalltalk project and dooms the other ones.

If management actually learned from these mistakes, I suspect that an awful lot of consulting firms would just disappear - since they mostly end up adding negative value.