Intelligence is definitly a factor. In fact, more often than not when I encounter a person or team that seem to spend their time on everything else except addre

Intelligence is definitly a factor. In fact, more often than not when I encounter a person or team that seem to spend their time on everything else except addressing their most important problems, the reason for the apparent procastination is that they simply do not even know how to START solving the problem. This is not exclusive for developers. It happens in management, too. Which is a second source of the problems you describe.