Development time is not expensive. When in the space of a quarter, two months are spent on all sorts of management level back and forth nonsense, then in the last month stuff has to get designed, architected, developed and tested, the actual development time is like 2-3 weeks. Not to mention that for every developer there are 3 or 4 if not more managers, directors, product owners, etc who cost a ton of money. Developers are still the cheapest part in a company.