It's not software; it's the fact that most managers/administrators are not software developers (although they may have some programming ability). so they stand in teh same relationto their development team as cusomers complaining to a manufacturer about the features on a physical product, and saying 'it should do this or that, it's an easy change to make' (because it's easy to imagine having it if you skip over the tedium of having to implement it).

Of course sometimes the ask is justified and addresses some failing of the original spec, either through lack of ambition or excess ambition that harnessed a cargo container to a lawnmower engine. But most of the conflict the article describe stems from a combination of imagining the benefits of change with the unspoken assumption that implementation is just a matter of pushing a few more buttons.