[carl_sandland]

Can great, quality software come out of a group of 'mediocre' people? I think you'll find that you do indeed need a strong(er) process and set of rules to follow, that's fine but not always applicable.

I think you need to tailor each group and their process carefully, depending on available talent pools and the complexity of the work being attempted, and sometimes you will need active management of requirements to achieve better outcomes. If your process grows faster than the core coding team does, you probably do have a negative process jerk happening you need to disrupt.

Maybe you'll get better results by not calling people 'mediocre' to start with, as if that's anything but a hateful subjective label.