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Discussion on: What are the least intuitive fundamentals and best practices in software development?

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Meghan (she/her)

Just because users are asking for a feature, the reason they give might not be the root problem.

However, users are the greatest sources of finding pain points and bottlenecks throughout your program. This is commonly called usability testing.

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Aaron Reese

And this is where a great BA is vital. Give the user what they need, not what they ask for. The analogy I use is going into a hardware store and asking for a 6mm (1/4 inch) drill bit. You don't want a 6mm bit, you want a 6mm hole. If I dig a bit further, what you are actually going is trying to hang a picture. If I can build you a picture hanging process that is repeatable, automated and 10x faster, now I have solved the business problem rather than letting the inexperienced user do the requirements analysis