Forgot to say: Freakanomics is interesting, but their chapter on abortion being the main driver in lowering the crime rate doesn’t fit the UK at any rate - I have little direct experience of the USA. The chapter was interesting mostly because they wrote that the woman at the centre of Roe vs Wade later became an anti-abortion campaigner. That also reminds me of the episode of House where a pregnant woman was about to die and House wanted to abort, but when they opened the womb to do a biopsy on the baby’s lung, the little fella grabbed House’s hand. It was such a good scene I never even thought of the special effects needed until I was half way through typing this comment.
Most of the software I develop is bespoke, so is heavily based around the client’s specific requirements. Only most clients don’t really know what they want when it comes to actual features. The big mistake is to offer clients a wide array of choices because they invariably always select what they perceive to be the most flexible, open solution - even if it is more difficult to develop and costs them more. And invariably they won’t use it.
If you say to someone, “Do you want feature X, which we think will do what you require, or do you want feature Y which will not only do what you want but also integrate with Facebook, generate PDFs and export data in ten different formats” then they will nearly always choose ‘Y’ because it sounds better and they are scared of making the wrong choice. People naturally hedge their bets and think, “Well, I better have that… just in case”.
The key I find is not to offer them choices but propose a solution and see whether it suits them. If it does, great, but if not then you are step further in finding out what they actually require.