This is true, project controls costs money.
Now ask yourself some simple questions:
- Are you, as the project manager, accountable in any way to steward the customers money, to show up on or near the planned time at or near the planned cost?
- Does your customer need to know when the project will be done and how much it will cost when it is done?
- Does anyone outside your small circle of developers on your team have a concern that the money is being spent in ways that support the business strategy - why are you doing this project?
- Is there someone in your organization that hands out money? If so, might they ask you "what did you do with my money?"
If the answer to any of these is NO, then Project Controls costs money that cannot be recovered by the success of the project. Stop doing project controls, you're wasting money.
But if the answer to these questions is YES, then project controls still cost money, but they MAY increase the Probability of Project Success (PoPS). I say MAY, because we work several programs where PP&C is a massive endeavor and the program is still "challenged."
Having good PP&C is a necessary but not sufficient condition for success. I exactly the same way having a credible software development method is necessary but not sufficient.