> I have observed several samples where the business, when provided with a natural language configuration opportunity, will wind up staring blankly at the textarea until the original developer gives them a complete starting point.

A lot of people lack “system thinking” when they can break down something into a set of elements and describe the relation between them. Once that done though , they can understand a part and manipulate it.

For some “system thinking” is innate. It can also be learned. But it’s a required quality in engineering where you need to create a solution where there was none.