Building software requires people with a certain skill set. To build a successful product you need a person with a clear vision of where the product is going. This person is the most important member of the team. Without him (or her) you will not be successful. This person, the champion, can guide the development towards the goal. The champion knows what features to include and what features not to include in the product. His clear vision will stop feature creep and lengthy unproductive discussions. The champion listens to others but has the final word. Democracy is not the way to go if you want to build remarkable software.
Developing a quality product is difficult, and a champion is only one piece of the puzzle. To build a great software product, you need great software. You won’t fool anybody by putting lipstick on a pig. This is a key aspect missed by a lot of companies.
To build great software you need a person who knows how to build software. It sounds obvious doesn’t it ? This person, let’s call him a developer lead, should be responsible for the development team. He is responsible for ensuring that sound software engineering practices are followed throughout the project and that the software quality is up to par. This is not a simple job.
Ideally the champion and the developer lead is the same person. The reason is simple: Communication. Communicating the vision is hard, and fewer people means simpler communication. If you want to develop software effectively you need to make trade-offs between the features you would like to have and the time it takes to implement them. Often you can make small adjustments to your requirements and gain a lot in terms of development time and better technical solutions. This translates to faster time to marked and eventually more revenue. Identifying these trade-offs are difficult, but if the champion knows the technical aspects of software development this problem disappears.
Having one person doing the work of a champion and a developer lead can be a recipe for failure if this one person fails at any of the two roles. A common mistake is to put a domain expert to the task of leading the development team, and thinking that if you put enough developers on the team the software will build itself.
I have seen many products become mediocre due to the lack of a champion or a dev. lead. The roles need not be explicit, but they need to be present in the team in some form.
What kind of people do you think is required to develop remarkable software ?
