Thanks for your article reminding me of the need to iteratively check in with business clients to make sure the analysis will be addressing central not peripheral problems.

This reminds me of "Backward Market Research" by Alan R. Andreason (1985)

Harvard Business Review original (paywall) <a>http://hbr.org/1985/05/backward-market-research/ar/5</a>

Free scanned pdf of full article <a>http://online.sfsu.edu/hussain/mktg632/backward%20market%20r...

The similarity that really struck me was running scenarios early in the process to discover which hypotheses really drive significant delta in business decisions.