it made a difference in preventing things from disappearing without trace. it's not a fun activity to dig through a bunch of closed/won't fix/not a bug tickets to figure out what is valid and what is not
no. but processes provided guard rails. i didn't enjoy it, but sometimes you have to work with what you have. you can't "reeducate" people in their 30s or 40s to be more responsible towards the work that they do.
interesting point though, it's the way that this company works it's that there is core r&d group that builds "framework products". those things never go to clients directly. they go through delivery groups that customize/extend them according to client needs. and fix bugs.
project that we build was the only one that was direct to client and many people simply couldn't grasp that they are now directly responsible for what client gets.