To me there are worse things in the story, though: they tried to make User Stories and even customer-driven tests and ended up burning out the only customer that was able to do it.
This is still a legitimate concern today with the "product owner" role that a lot of popular Agile processes rely on. In effect the whole premise of having a PO embedded within the team as the authority on requirements that are expected to change at any time means the entire software development process is built around a single human point of failure.
I think I draw the line at asking them to produce user stories, to me that's already too much. Asking them to use Cucumber or BDD rituals is probably against the Geneva convention.
There really is no silver bullet to writing software. You gotta keep a short feedback with users, and not overwhelming them is important.
This is still a legitimate concern today with the "product owner" role that a lot of popular Agile processes rely on. In effect the whole premise of having a PO embedded within the team as the authority on requirements that are expected to change at any time means the entire software development process is built around a single human point of failure.