[vacri]

I'd add that I have seen some endusers complain because we implemented features they were asking for. Not because those features were done poorly, but because the change requires a slight change to the user's workflow (software is many things, but it's not psychic).

I also remembered a new hardware product going out to a satellite office in $other_country, where the favourite sport of the sales staff was coming up with excuses for not meeting targets. This next-gen bit of hardware had everything they'd asked for and used as an excuse for not meeting those targets, and it was a nice bit of kit that would sell well (I'd previously worked in the industry it was targeted at and wished I'd had it then). Supplied with the first production model, they were asked for comments. The sole comment that was returned was "well, at least it's not green".

That company also gave me an insight to your #3. We had SAP-like software but the company treated us like shit so we were looking to replace them. It turns out there are (were as of 2009) no cheap options - they all failed at nested bills-of-material. A product might be a full box with manual and other parts. That product holds the assembled product and a couple of other assemblies. That assembled product holds several boards and subassemblies. Those subassemblies then require other parts. Rinse, repeat over several products and you have a system where there's nothing useful on offer at the cheap end of the spectrum (without heavy/clunky modification). Most of the cheap stuff was entertaining a retail mindset - "item A comes from supplier B/why would you need to ever put A and B in a kit?". Even the vaunted Salesforce needed customising to handle the idea of kits - and that is only a single level of nested BOMs.