"I led several product development projects where we were assigned subject matter experts by our clients. We were instructed to work with them primarily to gather and refine our requirements. We developed and released the product iteratively, and the end users were unhappy with the first releases. I invited several of them to lunch and learned that critical functions were missing from the release, which rendered the product useless until the gaps could be addressed.

I scheduled a meeting with the client project sponsors and asked to change how our team engaged with their company. I suggested that we include a focus group of end users in the requirements-gathering process to ensure we were clear on the scope. I suggested we work directly with the subject matter experts to refine the requirements.

The change we made resulted in a 48% increase in user adoption and a 32% decrease in rework. The project sponsors were impressed that we took action and turned things around so quickly. They are one of our best clients, and we work with them regularly as a result."