Great topic!
I have lead team and projects using a great deal of methodology from the PMBOK for years and have had the same thoughts\ observations. I think its a great idea if the details are worked out. There is CLEARLY a small PMO presence in many of the shops we've dealt with, which leads to missed deadlines, unexpected costs and fuzzy expectations.
A small story of one place I did see it in action:
In my business travels, I have only see one shop use a formal methodology and was so interested in the process that I had a one on one with the owner to share his thoughts and see how well it works from his prospective.
It was a custom paint shop, which was shocking since body guys are notorious for having creeping completion dates.
He had a calendar on the wall in the main shop area and it was outlined in a 2-week sprint layout. When I saw it, I knew there was a SCRUM methodology in play at his shop.
At our lunch meeting, he explained that it works as long as you can have what he called 'heavy resources'. More specifically, your customers have to have committed payments made at the end of every 2 week sprint. The other part of the heavy resources that he was constantly in need of was qualified paint and body employees. He explained that attrition was a problem by nature of mixing body and paint guys and structured project management because of 2 observations he's made:
1. Very good paint and body guys like structure and quickly move from working for others to working for themselves because of their own self-motivation.
2. Less accomplished paint and body folks who do the daily grind are usually not driven by structure so applying PMBOK methodology to their work day would be met with push-back and typically, loss of employment.
He accepted that attrition is something that comes with his labor community.
The car we had in was not only painted and returned ahead of time (by two days but hey, that's great) but the project schedule was hammered out with us before the car went in and we had to sign a commitment to deliver the car on X day in order for him to honor the schedule and payments were made at the end of each sprint or the work done in that time. It worked great and at the end of each sprint, there were picture updates sent and description of what the next sprint would include. Needless to say, we were impressed and incorporated small parts of their process into our own.
I think you're on to something and it's needed in the industry on a larger scale. Helping customers realize the advantage to the added cost that implementing formal PM processes may take time. Seeing that time is our most valuable resource on Earth, I could see how others would pay a bit more knowing that when you set a delivery date, it will be met.
Cant wait to hear what others have to share on this topic. Good one!
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