They have always struck me as a giant waste of time. Without knowing any of the engineering or business constraints, they're an exercise in academic masturbation.
The remind me of drawings I did when I was 6 about my awesome car that did everything: flamethrowers, wings, scuba gear AND 3459798345 miles to the gallon.
There are no business constraints forcing peopel to make poor decisions. There are just people making poor decisions. In a big company making a collectively poor decision you have a larger aggregate of people making poor decisions. But they are still people making poor decisions, and there are no inviolable constraints, no laws of physics that prevent the company from making good decisions in aggregate.
The UX designer says wait 12-18 months for a redesign. Why didn't they redesign the site 12 months ago so we could see it today? One or more poor decisions twelve months ago, that's why.
Other companies like ING and Apple get it, which tells me that There are no constraints, no laws, just people who zigged when they should have zagged.
If Dustin wants to shout that the emperor has no clothes, I'm happy with your ad hominem suggestion that he's a six-year old boy. Maybe that's what companies like AA need, a little boy to say "You could have everything, happy customers, an understandable web site, AND 3,459,798,345 in profits instead of losses."
"Why didn't they redesign the site 12 months ago so we could see it today? One or more poor decisions twelve months ago, that's why."
Maybe this was a good decision optimizing for something you aren't aware of.
"Other companies like ING and Apple get it."
Perhaps some would think they make poor decisions too.
Decisions optimize for things based on a perspective. If you share the perspective, it's a good decision, if you have a different one, perhaps it is a poor one.
Do you really think UX people at Apple or ING don't have to go through this as well? They might not have quite as many people impacting the process, but there are still hurdles they have to jump through.
Working for a large corporation is a challenge. You do the best you can to effect change, but most of the time you have to settle for small victories and pick your next battle. It sucks, but that's what you do.
So what would you call the requirement that my product parse iCal (RFC2445) instead of ignoring it and simply using the much more rationale Google Calendar GData API?
I could ignore iCal. It'd marginalize me to less than 5% of the market. You could argue it's a decision and you'd be right. But it is a decision that constrains the success of my business. Hence "business constraint".
What am I missing?
Apple would die if it's design wasn't the best in the industry. They "get it" because their competitive advantage is precisely that -- design.
I don't know a whole lot about ING, but it sounds like they similarly succeed by being the counter culture. They are, in fact, so specialized, that they're willing to turn away customers that withdraw money from their savings accounts too frequently. The point is, they're experts at what they do, and that's how they survive, the same way Apple survives by being the design expert for devices.
AA has to reinvent itself to become an expert. There are, no doubt, a lot of obstacles, constraints and laws, but their desperation will lead them to success.
Everybody in that company is standing around in a giant circle jerk telling everybody else in that company how hard it is to get anything done. Meanwhile, the company is going down in flames, and the web site is one aspect of it.
"Woe is me, my boss won't let me do good work! It's so COMPLICATED! You can't underSTAND BUSINESS! There are MULTIPLE STAKEHOLDERS!"
People, life is too short to make crap. If you have a job like that, quit.