All great tips, thanks for sharing. I didn't put a disclaimer in the post, but our experiences are indeed based on larger projects, typically at least in the $20,000+ range. Those are always tailor made apps, nothing off-the-shelf (apart from the framework and all the open source components we use, but nothing like Wordpress). What we do is often pretty specific.

I think your comment, as you said, has some great insights when it comes to smaller projects.