Architects do contract work with those types of situations. A lot of IT best practices come from decades of learning from the world of construction. If it costs 80% of your budget to fix a mistake after you're pouring concrete, you're going to make sure you know just where every joint and truss is going to be.

The cost of change for IT can be similarly daunting. The better we do at understanding what people are looking for up front, the better we're able to deliver what they want. And if they're unsure what they want, perhaps we can help them figure out what they need.

Just like in designing a home.