[kris_lander]

I agree whole heartily, but the risk that is rarely protected by the contract is whether those features will actually give the client any return on their investment. Keeping the investment small (in terms of scope and time) only reduces the exposure in terms of cost/time to the client, yet vendors are making countless decisions that affect the outcome (e.g. ROI) of a project. The "scope" in a contract tends only to specify "what" and not "how well" or "why". At my company been experimenting in trying to solve that problem by contractually committing to outcomes (e.g. a measurable goals connected to the business case - e.g. reduce churn, increase sales, etc.) and tying part of our payment to meeting those goals.