GrahamO - my point is without even the controls in place today (which you say are not good enough) the scope for cock-ups will be increased, not decreased.
I agree 100% that the potential for cock up is increased but would contend that the outcome is moderated by the ability of the organiser to run a professional integrated programme. Its very difficult to draw direct parallels between the breadth of military procurement activities and any directly comparable activity, but lets say for example, building the olympic stadium and constructing the logistics chain and remodelling much of London to suit. G4S cockup aside, the programme management of that task, with its massive overlapping security took the best that the UK had to offer and look how staggeringly well it went. then look at the shambles of government procurement, and the quality of staff and you can see why MOD can never catch up.
I've just been listening to some HMG 'security' experts waxing lyrical on how they are solving the challenges of events in 2020/2022 today, and they are spending a lot of brain power, time money and effort trying to convince themselves that they are spending wisely. The locals here are much more sensible and pragmatic , and commercially minded - their view is to come back in 2018/2020and tell me what the threat is then and we'll buy the best kit at that time, and not waste any money or effort trying to divine the future.
Sometimes 'being agile' means doing nothing until you must, rather than being constrained by historical constructs which are guaranteed to be out of date.