Click on the picture above to see the cartoon in full. This is what I face every day. I've been in every position except customer, so you can understand the frustration of trying to build software for people who can't explain what they want properly, even though they think they are doing an awesome job with explaining it to you. Coupled with the fact that a lot of times the customer doesn't really know what they need, but think they do, and you stay stuck in the first frame indefinitely.
Part of the problem is that the customer wants something built ASAP because that's what they understand. They don't understand that there is a lot of planning, designing, meetings, more meetings, re-designing, even more meetings to get to the last point. It requires a lot of up front work, a lot of documentation, a lot of communication, and very little actual product being coded. They just want something NOW, and usually for a lot less than they should be paying for.
But to be fair, it's not just the customer, it's also those other people in the process who make the same mistakes. Not enough up-front work, they jump into creating something before they really understand what the customer really needs. After all, that's what geeks love to do best. I'm certainly guilty of that.
So for you non-IT folks out there, this cartoon illustrates quite well some the frustrations that we IT folks face. Well sort of. There are also the IT-By-Accident types... (don't get me started!)
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