I have just recently worked on 2 software projects where the primary goal has been ignored in the beginning. The first project was the development of a website for renting out holiday properties. The primary goal was to get customers to go to the website and to get them to rent the properties. Instead of focusing on this goal, we worked on creating a great system for entering many details about properties and to provide extensive search functionality. Getting the publicity was an afterthought, and this was hard to correct.
A second project I've worked on was a research project where data analysis played a key role. Instead of focusing on this ultimate goal from the beginning, the focus had been on the collection of data. The data analysis part became a nagging issue at the end of the project and caused a lot of confusion and conflict.
My assumption is that it should be possible to sit down with a customer at the beginning of a project and ask them: what are your main goals for this project? What is the critical path? This is not always the most natural thing to do, because a customer usually asks for a particular piece of software. However, if you take a step back and ask these questions you can both see the big picture. In that way, it should be possible to attain real customer satisfaction.
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