Here’s what it taught me about product failure:
Clarity is a myth without user stories
I thought it was a chatbot
The Client thought it was a recommendation engine.
I thought we were all aligned. We were not.
No blueprint = build whatever
That gave me three versions
None solved the problem.
But hey, they did look cool.
Collaboration without context? Chaos
Meetings turned into therapy sessions.
Fixing assumptions later is expensive
I spent 3 weeks building.
In 2 weeks, I'm tearing it down.
Guess what i started with after that? Yep… user stories.
Lesson? Even in AI, human stories come first.
They’re not “extra documentation.”
They’re the difference between building what’s needed vs what looks smart.
Build the story before you build the stack.