Imagine my surprise when I received this link from my boss:

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/FrontAhead-Design.aspx

 
It became immediately apparent after reading this article that our company has been using this pattern for a long time.  After all of the conference sessions where we the developers have tried to get the management to allow us to utilize other design patterns, I have now realized that we have been using a pattern all along...  called F.A.D. Front-Ahead Design.  In a nutshell, FAD involves developing your applications from the front-end backwards.  Afterall, customers never see the elegant use of design patterns, and since so many developers are not familiar with the Gang-of-Four Patterns, for example, using them doesn't particularly get used when projects pass hands.

 
For all of my concern of building software "right" over the past year, this article makes an excellent point.  "The average software system has a life expectancy of seven years. No matter how 'properly' the system is designed from the start, within the first year of its life, maintenance programmers unfamiliar with the complex architecture (and having no help from out-of-date documentation) will turn the system into a complete mess with bug fixes and change requests."(http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/FrontAhead-Design.aspx).  I can't tell you how many times we have had developers wreck our perfectly planned project because of this reason.  And it is interesting to note that since most software will only be used for 7 years anyway, that the user experience SHOULD be the MAIN concern.  Of course, collecting data is important and should function perfectly, but the users are not going to remember how quickly your web service call executed (unless your server is so slow that its ridiculous).  But rather, how enjoyable the application was WHILE they were submitting data and purchasing from your site.