I agree: once the development process is organized to the level that for every few lines of code three meetings on higher level managers and "designers" have to happen and be signed and the developer just has to write three lines and make ten times more paperwork (in triplicate), and constantly wait for other parts of the organization, no developer can be better than any other, to the joy of the managers, and all developers became provably replaceable. Not because the developer can't do better, but because the whole organization mostly doesn't prioritize effective development.

I however suspect that such an organization, happy to meter the development, would not meter the efficiency of the whole, and especially would not allow comparing that whole to some other organizing model -- it could prove that the managers are the weak point after all.