Most enterprise software is based around forms, validation and business rules. Where things start to become unstuck (look for "itfailures" on Delicious) are: 1

Most enterprise software is based around forms, validation and business rules. Where things start to become unstuck (look for "itfailures" on Delicious) are: 1. The languages and tools change - but are often immature for the task, which means a lot of reinvention and re-workarounds 2. Users ask for nice-to-haves but are often difficult to implement as it is a once-off operation - federated sign on in frameworks that do not support it natively 3. The specification problem - the more people you have involved, more people are required to understand the problem domain in order to translate into code. The problem is particularly bad when rolling out new payroll systems in Government/heavily unionized industries, as there are just a lot of rules which can be very difficult to implement. 4. It is still ridiculously difficult to test enterprise software across the full stack.