With this goal in mind, we need to make sure that our projects have high levels of business input throughout our projects. We need to look to solutions that will remove obstacles to participation in modeling efforts, encouraging more frequent and in-depth use of modeling artifacts. We also need to establish a common ground, speak the same language, and provide a comfortable environment which encourages information quality and productivity in order to reach everyone's goal: to support successful business operations.

Many times, collaboration with business clients often falls short of the effectiveness that would create the highest-quality projects. Functional specifications don't always map directly to business needs and business user requirements can get lost in the technical translation.
Improving interaction with your business clients will ensure that what your teams produce moves the client's business forward.

This paper discusses five things you can do right now to improve collaboration with business users.