An often overlooked piece of the requirements gathering and documenting portion of a project is assuming that everyone understands the assumptions.  Almost every project document includes a list of assumptions.  Problems arise when the assumptions are not clear or when some are left off of the document.  

As IT consultants, we often find ourselves aligned to (read: paid by) either business or IT, but to implement successful technology solutions we have to work in concert with both business and IT stakeholders. We have to avoid the mistakes that follow from putting IT at the center of the universe to the detriment of the business users. IT supports business, and we always have to work with that at the forefront of our minds. Below are a few tips that I've found that are helpful in putting the needs of the business first.

1. No IT project is ever and end to itself

Schedule pressure can cause us to gather requirements before the stakeholders are fully ready to define what they really would like.  So in order to meet the deadline we may gather a high-level requirement such as “The system shall capture additional data from the client on the screen XYZ”.  This may be used as a placeholder to be further defined during system design or development.  It may seem harmless to just put in this placeholder; however, it may end up causing more harm than good to the project in the end.