One of the first things I noticed out of school was that most projects prefer not using formal methodologies for building software. A lot of the projects that

One of the first things I noticed out of school was that most projects prefer not using formal methodologies for building software. A lot of the projects that do, tend to focus on applying methodologies more rigorously than the actual goal of the software. I've seen problems with both. I think what some people miss about having a formal methodology is that a lot of time can end up being wasted addressing the same types of issues (design problems, bugs, re-implementing things, multiple requirements changes, etc...). The same can actually be true with applying methodologies too rigorously though. The most effective software development I've seen tends to be where the culture values both quality and time spent. If something can improve quality and reduce the amount of time spent on boring tasks, it generally doesn't take much convincing there. I think in a lot of ways, a lack of focus on software engineering isn't necessarily an academic problem. It can end in some fairly bad results though, like the Knight Capital incident (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Capital_Group#2012_stock_trading_disruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Capital_Group#2012_stoc...), so obviously there can be a very tangible impact.