In my experience, developers are rarely any good at conceiving of the product that customers want. This is a special skill, which requires patience with custom

In my experience, developers are rarely any good at conceiving of the product that customers want. This is a special skill, which requires patience with customers and users, and a keen understanding of the domain. It is pure fantasy to expect that anyone could wave their process wand over a team and turn out a great product just because people who are good at coding try to guess at product design. I designed a test tool that was implemented by a small team of coders. It wasn’t until half way through the project that the senior developer suddenly realized how testers would use the tool. I know this because he told me… and that’s when I discovered that he and the rest of the team had been humoring me up to that point, confused about the features I had insisted upon. I had explained the concept over and over, and they had nodded as if they understood. Imagine having to get a group like that to independently bring a product together when apparently they couldn’t or didn’t want to savor its vision? I started my professional career as a coder in 6502 assembly, doing video games designed by my boss. I saw first hand, in game after game, that my coding skills in no way overlapped with those needed to design a good game. I had one idea for a game (Adventure Creator for C64) and watched in wonder as he (Dale Disharoon) turned it into a playable design.