Well Designed Software and the Last Hill
There comes a time in your development cycle where if you have designed your system well you start to see a payoff. If you have a good seperation between data, logic, and display and your system is logically laid out then near the end of the cycle as you approach launch date you will start to notice a trend. The customer will make a request and you will find that you can implement the change more and more quickly. If you need to make a business logic change you only have to go one place to make it and you don't have to double check a thousand other places to make sure the change didn't break something. Page layout? same thing. Database layer changes? Ditto. You start to experience 5 and 10 minute turnarounds on minor changes and 1-2 hour turnarounds on larger ones. Enjoy this period while you can. It's a very good place to be.