On the php|architect site today there's an opinion piece from Marco Tabini with his thoughts on why software fails - not why the project itself fails, but why the software fails to be useful.

This is a much more common problem than engineers and architects are willing to admit. Far too often I see someone in charge of writing a piece software worry about how a product works without paying so much as a passing thought to whether it actually works the way people expect it to. The truth is that we are, by and large, stuck in a reality where software somehow equates with automation.

He goes on to talk about how easy it is for us, as developers, to forge head with features and software that may not be useful to the masses. We worry more about solving a problem that may or may not actually be there. He illustrates with the example of a to-do list, providing the automation to make list tracking easier, but no guidance of how the user can make use of it effectively.