> Note that the time to improve the situation includes not only the actual time to implement the changes, but also the time to play politics and get funding/resources.
That's the problem. Explaining to the beancounters why this is needed and why Susan can't just RDP in from home anymore. The implementation of these things are fairly trivial, the hand holding takes forever. Add the fact that lots of us got into IT to avoid playing these games and you've got the current state of affairs.
I work on a safety critical piece of software. To give QE more than a day or two to test it is a fight every single release. After many unsuccessful attempts I stopped swinging at windmills. We pulled about half of the software releases we made last year due to patient safety issues discovered by customers. Management still wants "agile"