One of our Business Partners suggested a pop up box with Yes No Cancel, and then went on to describe the behaviors of each button. Absolutely no imagination. It's like people have been broken by years of limited choices.

With some types of people, I've just stopped trying to get them to back up and describe the underlying pain point they are trying to relieve. Because as far as I can tell, some people just can not do that. Instead, I let them describe their implementation and listen/ask/listen/ask/listen to understand what they're actually trying to fix.

And then once we have the problem figured out, we as a dev/design team go back and work forward again to design a proposed solution. And then we present that. Often enough, they're happy to accept it. The trick is that some egomaniacs just get fixated on their own proposed solution, and won't let go. And then you just give them their Homermobile: http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/the-homer-in...

If I had a dollar for every time a customer finally confessed that they actually wanted a different feature but thought it would be too expensive...

Nothing like blowing $40,000 on a $1000 feature.

Could you give an example of what you mean by "tender-based software projects"?

The client writes spec and solicits a bid, instead of soliciting design partners.