Dave, thanks. You're right, I may have come across as picking on Thomas, and that's a little unfair out of context. Honestly, though, I do feel like sometimes developers focus on their most direct clients (the users of the system) at the expense of the end goals. At Digett we are often in the position of developing (and executing) our clients' marketing programs. We are usually judged on the results of that, so we really do have to put first priority on the clients' audience. Still, I don't disagree... content is king, and if we can make systems that are easier for content managers to leverage, that benefits everybody.

Our clients are looking to completely revamp their sites every ~3 years to freshen the design, re-brand, and update the IA to better reflect their evolving organization.

Yes, that's not an uncommon scenario for us, too. What really bugs me, though, is that in addition to revamping visual and information design, we sometimes have to tackle, for example, a complete migration of content. I don't see the value in that, nor in re-customizing the administrative aspects, such as node add/edit forms. I wish we could figure out how to separate the things that *should* change from the things that should not, and avoid the cost associated with the latter.