Storyboarding and empathy maps are techniques frequently taught and discussed in UX education. Having about 2 years under my belt on a small team as a generalist, where I'm involved in all stages including research, not once has there been an instance where a storyboard or an empathy map have seemed to be useful in any way. Our team doesn't utilize them at all.

The same applies to the common persona template; in general UX education, we are taught very simplified ways to create personas, which often include inventing a character with some fictional background story to serve as the face of the persona. While it's certainly been useful to define personas and different user needs, all this other fluff that is frequently taught just seems like a waste of time.

While I know that flexibility is important, and you can't have a one-size-fits-all approach to UX, I'm wondering if many others feel the same about the above techniques. Or, if these tools have helped you, I'm interested in hearing about how they did.