The brief doesn't match the real job

These show up differently but come from the same place: nobody checked the specification against how the work is actually, currently done.

Stale, because nobody checked

A brief gets signed off, then sits for months or years before anyone builds against it. The people who approved it move on. The business changes around it. By the time work starts, it's being built to a picture of the business that no longer exists.

Incomplete, because requirements arrive gradually

Being careful with money produces this one. Someone asks for the first piece, sees how it goes, and adds the next thing once they know they need it. That's a sensible instinct, and it's also how a project quietly grows past the shape it was designed for, one reasonable request at a time, each one presented as the last.

What tends to help

Seeing the whole shape of the job before committing to build any of it. It doesn't mean building everything you find; usually it means the opposite. It tells you what you don't need to build.

A youth sports club platform grew this way: a small admin panel and a handful of one-off pages, each one reasonable at the time, until the whole thing needed to be a membership, payments and scheduling system. Read more in why asking for one thing at a time costs more.

Work out what the same pattern is costing in your business with the admin cost calculator, or see how the Admin Automation Audit maps it.