I just started reading a book by Russell Ackoff entitled "Ackoff's Best: His Classic Writings on Management."

In the very first chapter, "Our Changing Concept of the World," he says: "... by the time we find solutions to many of the problems that face us, usually the most important ones, the problems have so changed that our solutions to them are no longer relevant or effective; they are stillborn." Of course, here Ackoff is talking about the big, important problems of the world at large, but the spirit of what he's saying applies equally well to business solutions, particulalry web-based business solutions.

It is very easy to fall in love with a specific solution and forget about the end-user's real evolving problem. If a particularly solution is going to take more than a couple of days to create and release, then it behooves us to constantly go back to our end-users to test how the solution is coming along. Otherwise, your users will go on their merry way and leave your solution behind. The process of creating business solutions needs to be agile (and maybe even Agile).

This is not a call to "Agile" for Agile's sake. This is a call to self-preservation. More than anything else, requirements change. All the time. Every minute of every hour.

To quote Akoff again, "The only kind of equilibrium that can be obtained by a light object in a turbulent environment is dynamic−like that obtained by an airplane flying in a storm, not like that of the Rock of Gibraltar."

Make sure your development process can handle this kind of change easily, as part of its DNA.