Agreed! I, too, really liked the garage-building analogy - I'll have to save that for future use. I also liked your comments about keeping the lines of communication short (ie. direct) between the end-users and the developers. My boss instructs me NOT to attend meetings with the end-users (my boss will tell me what to do, and he leans towards giving them the bare minimum). I find this frustrating, because I want to hear the vision (hmm, mixed metaphor) of where the client wants to go, so I CAN plan ahead.

Thanks, David, for a very useful article.