As presently practiced they all indeed are cons for bleeding clients dry. I haven't met Zed, but I can't imagine he thinks he can read minds, he must ask at some point what the customer wants to get out of the project. But the endless bikeshedding meetings and piles of useless UML diagrams and other documents is indeed just a scam.

The most absurd thing of it all is that even in-house development organizations behave the exact same way, despite having the exact opposite incentives.