> Bringing executives and managers in the development process is a recipe for disaster, there's a separation of roles for a reason. In one sense, yes. Having

> Bringing executives and managers in the development process is a recipe for disaster, there's a separation of roles for a reason. In one sense, yes. Having people who aren't intimately familiar with a code base/data base decreeing how things must be done is... challenging. On the other hand, executives and managers do tend to take a proprietary interest in how people's time and the organization's money is being spent, and sometimes this does spill over in to technical matters. One way to empirically assess this would be to survey the executive and managerial offices around you, and see whether there are diagrams drawn there by technical staff, perhaps on a whiteboard, or a piece of paper, or in some electronic form. If this is the case, you may already have the disaster you fear... or perhaps it's just the way of the world. To my thinking, sharper tools to assist in conveying technical points accurately to non-technical people is an underserved and valuable market, even if you get rid of the snake-oil salesmen.