The project team was aligned. Requirements were approved. The solution was ready for testing. And then—it all fell apart. This is a true story of a project where the complete absence of end-user involvement led to a dramatic clash between what stakeholders thought the process looked like and what actually happened on the ground. Testing revealed a complete mismatch: the designed solution didn’t fit the real process, because no one had ever validated it with those who actually do the work. The project never made it to production. Instead, we had to start over—remapping the process, involving actual users, and uncovering their real needs. This talk is about a costly mistake—and how to avoid it by putting real users at the heart of business analysis.