> Two years later, the client canceled the two-years-late project before it ever launched. They ate a $60M loss.
You could say that the customer got exactly what they paid for. The customer lacked the ability pay in terms of specifications, so what they got was what $60M and a half-hearted attempt to articulate what they needed could buy.
On the other hand, the customer never knows what they want. You could say that's the job of the software company - to slog through the mountain of feature requests disguised as specifications to arrive at a system that will actually solve the customer's real problem.
> You could say that's the job of the software company - to slog through the mountain of feature requests disguised as specifications to arrive at a system that will actually solve the customer's real problem.
That's the role of a business analyst, product owner, customer liaison, sales engineer, or some similar role for sure. If you're running a large project without one of those as a dedicated full-time resource then it falls on the project manager. If the PM can't do that, they should delegate to some role like those, possibly a few of them for various vertical slices of the project.
You could say that the customer got exactly what they paid for. The customer lacked the ability pay in terms of specifications, so what they got was what $60M and a half-hearted attempt to articulate what they needed could buy.
On the other hand, the customer never knows what they want. You could say that's the job of the software company - to slog through the mountain of feature requests disguised as specifications to arrive at a system that will actually solve the customer's real problem.