I could argue and provide some really good examples where it is the business analysts on these projects that can't communicate their needs and lay out all the possible business scenarios so that the IT guys can build all the logic into the application that is needed for all the potential transaction types. On the back-end these same business analysts only test a handful of all possible business scenarios and say the application is ready to go into production and the result is quite similar to what AC.com is experiencing, a lot of frustrated (putting it mildly) users. Lastly, it is these same business folks that control the project purse strings and the first thing they cut is the user acceptance testing (Hey you guys told me the code compiled so what bugs could possibly be in it? )

I'm sure there is plenty of ka-ka being spread around on this latest incarnation of AC.com and the AC IT types, AC business types, software vendors and AC's IT outsourcing vendor all have some soul searching to do on how they can do a better job the next time around. I can't imagine it was an easy project to manage with all 4 of these groups each having their own vested interest in the final product and I'm sure during the design, development and testing their was a lot of mud slinging going on that we'll never know about. I don't think it's fair to single out one group for these problems. They all should share equally in the successes and failures of this release.