Picking the right users for a data modeling project

Ken Evans said (LinkedIn, Data Modeling, 2020/03/29)
The piece of the puzzle that you have not mentioned is where the users understanding of their domain is rather vague.

Everest responds:

If you have users with a vague understanding of their domain, you are talking to the wrong people. I have found that there are people in the user domain who really do know what is going on, what their world looks like. They are often seen as troublemakers, asking the tough questions, complaining about how things are done (or not done) and suggesting how things could be done better. People on the front lines working in the trenches who actually think about what they are doing, are not satisfied with the status quo, going beyond their job description. Every organization has such people; you just need to find them. And the best way to find them is to ask other users. Most can readily tell you who they are. If there is no one they can point to, you have a dead or dieing organization where nobody cares. The people who fit the profile above will generally not be management or senior level -- who are usually tending to managing and training people, as they should be. Once you get the right people to the table it takes a skilled facilitator to elicit the needed information and document it in a usable form, i.e. a data model, such that they understand and concur with the representation.