The takeaway I have is a question.  Why isn't there a good equivalent to the big mac in the consulting world?<p>Every time you go cheap, or with the "big consultants" that joel describes the expected outcome is massive time overruns and massive budget overruns.<p>The closest thing to the big mac model I can think of is installation of existing software, with customization for the environment, but even there you get the 3 year long SAP projects that cost tons.<p>What prevents software from being put into a manual?  I'm hoping the answer is something beyond "requirements don't match up exactly to previous problems... ever", but I fear that's all it is.