This InfoWorld survey - 2005 survey spots trends in software development - had a great section on "Getting applications right". One of the lead quotes is:
This gap[between user requirements and developer specifications] was one of the two principal challenges developers complained about in our survey, with 40 percent of respondents reporting that it was a major problem at their site.
So, the gap between user requirements and developer specifications is one of the major challenges? Perhaps people should be adopting technology that closes this gap by empowering users to manage the application more directly? Technology like business rules?
There's a bunch of entries about this on the site. So many, in fact, I added a new category to help you find them.
