Excellent article and recommended methodologies.

I certainly can't speak for every situation, but I have definitely found that not consistently and continuously garnering feeback from the actual end-users of a product that is being des/devved to cause huge issues later down the road.

If and when users have needs, expectations, and peripheral functionality requirements that you don't know about, no amount of finessing the appearance or offering of the product will fix the issue.

I would hazard to say that misalignment is probably the largest organizational threat that we face between a product that we believe users want, like, and will pay for based on the data, vs how users feel about the enitre affair.

Hard agree with your article: the feedback gap is always a huge issue, as is overpromising, ESPECIALLY if a company is IPOing with a flagship product.

Very nicely done!