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“Developers Don't Need to Know the Product”

projectsherpa.com

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Re: “Developers Don't Need to Know the Product”

#11

Post by jwmaiden »

pinaceae wrote: post #10

"The product side needs to provide a set of requirements, and the development side needs to find out what the client needs, and how to deliver it. The development side has to have enough product knowledge to determine the actual need, not the stated want" disagree with that statement. "The product side needs to find out what the client really needs and build requirements out of it. The development side has to determi…

Working with Product is never that clear cut. Sometimes they need to be prodded to come up with exact requirements.

Re: “Developers Don't Need to Know the Product”

#12

Post by j_baker »

If there's one thing that grinds my gears, it's people who treat engineers as if they were some kind of underclass who have absolutely zero ability to understand customer needs. It's sometimes like engineers solely exist to translate other peoples' ideas into reality.

Re: “Developers Don't Need to Know the Product”

#13

Post by j_baker »

benkross wrote: post #3
mrchuckmills2 wrote: post #2

> I’m sure that no one has ever said something that stupid out loud You haven't been around much, have you?

I have been fortunate to be surrounded by people who are generally intelligent and progressive that believe engineers should be part of the entire lifecycle. Would you care to share your experience with us?

It's rarely that blatant. Most people use more covert methods to keep engineers out of the lifecycle. It can be frustrating because most of these statements can be valid when uttered under different circumstances.

- "Only "power users" will use that." Sometimes this one's true, but some people will say this about any idea engineers come up with.

- "Let's see what someone in product thinks." The key thing you have to pay attention to here is the subtext. If it's "Let's keep product people in the loop", that's good. If it's "Your idea is invalid because you don't have the title 'Product Manager'", then you have a problem.

- "I understand you don't want to complicate the code, but our customers don't care about that." This one's a minefield. It puts you in a place where you have to either make a poor technical decision, or get accused of not caring about the customer.

But by far the most common tactic is merely excluding engineers from important meetings, and only bringing them in when they need someone to write the code.

Re: “Developers Don't Need to Know the Product”

#14

Post by j_baker »

pinaceae wrote: post #10

"The product side needs to provide a set of requirements, and the development side needs to find out what the client needs, and how to deliver it. The development side has to have enough product knowledge to determine the actual need, not the stated want" disagree with that statement. "The product side needs to find out what the client really needs and build requirements out of it. The development side has to determi…

See? Now you're going back to "engineer is a dumb machine who translates other peoples' thoughts into code" land. Reality is more like this:

"The sales side figures out what customers claim they can't live without. The product side figures out how to turn those perceived needs into a product. Development figures out how to make it meet with reality."

Re: “Developers Don't Need to Know the Product”

#15

Post by jmspring »

j_baker wrote: post #12

If there's one thing that grinds my gears, it's people who treat engineers as if they were some kind of underclass who have absolutely zero ability to understand customer needs. It's sometimes like engineers solely exist to translate other peoples' ideas into reality.

Large companies that tend to be PM driven come to mind in this particular scenario. It is not universal, but I've met multiple PMs from a couple of companies that referred to engineers as "the devs" and felt their meetings and schmoozing across teams was the most important thing.

Re: “Developers Don't Need to Know the Product”

#16

Post by matthewsinclair »

I've had a similar experience in financial services but from the other direction, and particularly as an architect.

I can't tell you how many times I have heard the phrase "I'm a banker, I don't need to understand the technology" from people in very senior positions with very high salaries.

The thing that they fail to understand - apart from routinely missing fundamental banking concepts like "on behalf of" or "product as sold" - is that banking is technology.

Banks don't store cash any more, they store bits.

Re: “Developers Don't Need to Know the Product”

#17

Post by gliese1337 »

matthewsinclair wrote: post #16

I've had a similar experience in financial services but from the other direction, and particularly as an architect. I can't tell you how many times I have heard the phrase "I'm a banker, I don't need to understand the technology" from people in very senior positions with very high salaries. The thing that they fail to understand - apart from routinely missing fundamental banking concepts like "on behalf of" or "produ…

You have to consider their goals, which define their needs. If they are in very senior positions and have very high salaries already, and don't understand the technology, then it's fairly obvious that they do not need to understand the technology. They got everything they wanted without that ever being a requirement.

Of course, it's better for everybody else if they do. We need them to understand the technology. They don't.

Re: “Developers Don't Need to Know the Product”

#18

Post by nudetayne »

matthewsinclair wrote: post #16

I've had a similar experience in financial services but from the other direction, and particularly as an architect. I can't tell you how many times I have heard the phrase "I'm a banker, I don't need to understand the technology" from people in very senior positions with very high salaries. The thing that they fail to understand - apart from routinely missing fundamental banking concepts like "on behalf of" or "produ…

Everything is based on stored bits. It's how those bits are interpreted that matters. No banker should care that they store bits instead of physical cash. It simply doesn't matter. I've only ever seen inept programmers think that everyone should know the underlying technology, which I guess you could say is hypocritical, as I doubt many of them truly understand what's happening in the lower levels of programming, physics, or math. Abstraction - it's important.

Re: “Developers Don't Need to Know the Product”

#19

Post by mathattack »

benkross wrote: post #5
mathattack wrote: post #4

There are two kinds of programmers with massive productivity benefits to an organization: 1 - Those that can identify what needs to be done at a level deeper than the end users, can communicate very well, and can code reasonably well. (Coding well enough to understand complexity, and can do things on the fly if needed) 2 - Those who appreciate the difficulties that users have, and have an enormous technical toolset t…

1 - You describe what most Banks and Hedge Funds would call RAD (Rapid Application Developers) Developers (I know redundant like saying "The La Brea Tar Pits...the the tar tar pits ; 0 ). They are those who are good enough with dev, but understand the biz domain well. I've seen some startups where Product Managers can also function in that capacity, prototyping, basic dev. 2 - Couldn't agree more, but ALAS, there are…

I'll shoot you an email....

Re: “Developers Don't Need to Know the Product”

#20

Post by alien3d »

Yes And No. No 1. Should a developer will knew all business logic around ?Must knew accounting if erp ,must knew mechanical if do mechanical project. Yes 1. Most developer come from business logic itself and normal CS degree.Some big system(ORACLE E_BUSINESS,SAP and so so on) not even cater for their environment business.Some fell back to Microsoft Excel.So to counter them at lease have business logic also.
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