This is such a common pathology it does cast doubt on the entire field of software development but I would like to note it's been pretty commonly spread and now

This is such a common pathology it does cast doubt on the entire field of software development but I would like to note it's been pretty commonly spread and now many years old best practice to have real users in constant communication and perhaps colocated with developers. This is a very predictable outcome when a requirements doc is tossed over the wall followed by patient waiting for the output. Again, it happens all the time so maybe this advice isn't enough or practical or something, but there is a well recognized solution and I would wonder whether it was done in this project.