"The problem is that every software project I've been a part of (either as an individual or a manager) has a Doomed inflection point late in the product cycle. I don't think it's avoidable."

I've been in software development for 18 years, been involved in a lot of successful projects, and haven't had this experience more than two times.

Perhaps the difference is that many of my teams have been very collaborate from the beginning - they did not require a crisis to figure out that code needs refactoring.

By the way, why did you delete my previous comment?