I've been contracting for several years and I think perhaps enough time to emphasize with my clients even when they can't tell me what they want, so permit me t

I've been contracting for several years and I think perhaps enough time to emphasize with my clients even when they can't tell me what they want, so permit me to offer the other other side. People can't provide a spec because they don't really understand what they want. Sure. And certainly, part of that in many projects is poor communication between stakeholders and a refusal to make decisions. But especially for public facing sites it's often difficult to impossible to figure out what behaviors or workflows are effective and which are not. Prototypes have to be built, put before the public, A/B tested, etc. This process is time consuming and often results in fundamental changes to the spec that can affect large amounts of code. A spec can't really be written, handed over, implemented, signed off on. So communication and flexibility really has to be built in to the relationship between the stakeholders and the developers. The thing that I found is really essential to a good relationship with clients is instant messaging. All developers and stakeholders need to work regular hours and be available on IM. Projects where everyone is on IM, in my experience, go much more smoothly than projects where IM isn't used or is only used by part of the team. The real magic behind IM is that it's a communication method that doesn't necessarily demand immediate attention when a message is sent, so it doesn't interfere with a developer's day the way the phone does. It just changes the status icon color and allows you to respond when you get to a stopping point. But then when you do respond it seamlessly turns into a two way conversation. I've gotten to the point where "is everyone on IM?" is my principal litmus test for deciding if a project is going to be a pleasant one to work on or not. This is far more important than pretty much anything else, including the quality of the initial spec.