You are NOT Your User

Gathering requirements from project sponsors, SME’s and power users is great until you realize that the most valuable assets were the least voiced and most overlooked contributor to the project: the end-user. Ultimately it is the end-user who has the problem because their current business practices aren’t meeting a business need. Learn ways to empathize with your end-user to get them to TEACH you about their struggles and observe their behaviors to detect underlying issues that have yet to be identified as a problem (inefficient, ineffective and could just be outright wrong!). Then use agility in your analysis to fail fast and learn cheap! No software required! Learn and iterate until you get it right leaving your project sponsor and your end-user in delight.