[nw]

I believe the problem stems from a misconception on both sides of the table. What passes for design in the software world is little more than what an architect might sketch on a napkin over dinner.

The code is the design. What other deliverable of the software development process contains the precision and specificity of a blueprint, which can then be followed to actually build (the double entendre is no coincidence) the thing?

A contractor equates to a compiler, albeit an expensive, time-consuming, and buggy one.

I don't think clients are so much to blame... it's just that software is so abstract and a house so, shall we say, concrete. We need to do a better job of helping clients understand and visualize what we are doing.