I agree! You are coding ideas for people, but somebody needs to translate those ideas into code for them to work, and what might be planned might not be the best or most efficient course of action.
Sometimes it is hubris, such as where management prevents experimentation.
Unlike developers who tend to be experts in the domain, managers tend to be experts at sales and management but not the domain of the product.
Yet they get to value market ideas and their impact.
Moreover, they love to hide this behind anonymous "units" and "divisions" to redirect blame and responsibility.
In the past, such problems were solved by analysts and focus tests using prototypes. But when you work on the cheap, even finished applications are prototypes.
