Many software development failures are due to lack of understanding and controlling the complexity given cost, people and time constraints. Processes helps the

Many software development failures are due to lack of understanding and controlling the complexity given cost, people and time constraints. Processes helps the controlling part but sometimes gives a wrong illusion that things are under control and thus hurts the understanding part: people stop bothering to think. Building large software is really delicate work. You need to have a correct decomposition (thus to reduce the level of complexity) and have a good control of flexibility and complexity trade off on the component level. It is somehow like solving a formula with many parameters. You can not just look at one or two of them.