Skill should factor, any sane government who is doing immigration based on "Skilled worker", will emphasize on skill.
However, the couple of Feb/March applicant who already landed (completion in 9 months), I believe they were just plain lucky.
For example, VO-X has 50 application at hand. Then VO-X quits (strike?) and CIC takes these 50 application divides them to VO-Y and VO-Z.... Now out of these 50 apps, VO-Y has 1-25 (earlier applications), VO-Z has another 26-50 (later applications). Both of these officers starts working on these applications simultaneously.
The people who got lucky, were in the later stack. It means even though they were in the bottom of the pile, after the division, their file came to the top. Their application was processed along with November/December Applicants.
Anyways, I feel this was a rare occurrence and 80% of the applications will be processed on a first-come-first-serve basis.