Part One: Strategy · Where demand comes from
It is cheaper to solve the middle step, where the software is. People are left stranded before it and after it, and blame the product for the parts it ignored.
Software teams naturally draw the edge of the problem at the edge of the screen. A veterinary clinic's app lets an owner book an appointment. That is the middle. Before it, someone stood in the kitchen at ten at night wondering whether a limping dog can wait until Monday. After it, they went home with a bottle of tablets, half-remembered instructions, and no idea when to worry.
From the maker's side, the product works. From the owner's side, "getting the dog seen" was an anxious night, a visit and a week of guessing, and the app is the face of all of it.
The steps outside the software are where much of the trouble lives, because they are where people wait, guess and hand things to each other. They are also less convenient to build for. They involve other people, other companies, paper and the telephone.
Nobody can build all of it. What matters is knowing where the job really begins and ends, and then choosing with open eyes. Sometimes the answer is a feature. More often it is smaller: three questions that end in "come in tonight" or "this can wait," the vet's instructions sent in writing an hour after the visit, a message on day three asking how the dog is eating.
The same holds for software used at work. A tool for approving purchase requests is judged by the person who asked for a laptop and has heard nothing for two weeks.
Therefore:
Follow one person through the entire job, from the moment they realize they must do it to the moment it is truly finished. Cover the steps where they wait, guess or hand off.
In practice. Ask a customer to tell you everything they did the last time, starting an hour before they opened the product and ending when they stopped thinking about it. Mark every step that happened somewhere else.
Goes with. The whole job is the full shape of THE PROGRESS THEY WANT (2). You learn it when you WATCH WHAT THEY DO (20), and its end should be marked by A PLACE TO FINISH (49).