I remember one chap who wanted us to build a complex risk management application for investment banks who got most irate when we asked the details of what it should do (NB purely the required functionality, we could work out to technically build it).
Eventually we did persuade him - we should have given up early on as eventually after many many months of work the whole thing ended up in a deeply stressful court case.
Edit: After the litigation settled with anyone walking away and paying their own legal costs he approached me and wanted to be friends again..... Didn't reply to that email.
Edit2: This was 20 years ago and the litigation still makes me stressed thinking about it now :-|
> complex risk management application for investment banks ... details of what it should do
As someone who works on risk and regulatory management software for investments banks: often they don't know exactly what they want it to do. Well, they know what they want it to do right now, vaguely, but what detail beyond the vague that they give will differ from what they'll want next time you meet with them.
Eventually we did persuade him - we should have given up early on as eventually after many many months of work the whole thing ended up in a deeply stressful court case.
Edit: After the litigation settled with anyone walking away and paying their own legal costs he approached me and wanted to be friends again..... Didn't reply to that email.
Edit2: This was 20 years ago and the litigation still makes me stressed thinking about it now :-|