• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to site footer

Shaping Software

Enduring Ideas in the Realm of Software

  • About
  • Topics
  • Best Software Engineering Books
  • Lessons in Software
  • Archives
  • JD Meier.com

Shifts of Power

Jun 1, 2008 by JD

When Ward Cunningham was on our patterns & practices team at Microsoft, he would talk about “shifts of power.”  What’s interesting is how requirements perspectives both reflect and shift power.

  • “User” is king on the Web.  This is because they have choices, so the non-functional requirements / experience are competitive advantages. For example, if an application is faster, more reliable … etc. then you use it.
  • “Business” is king in the corporate Line-of-Business applications space. Users don’t have a choice. “User” experience takes the hit — bad performance, bad UI (User Interface)… etc. … as long as the job gets done, the business doesn’t care.  
  • “System” is king for engineers.  This is why you can end up with a lot of technology requirements for technology’s sake.
    What’s interesting is that as consumers press the Web for better experience, this carries over to the Enterprise, so our challenge becomes finding, sharing, and leveraging the proven user experience patterns.

My Related Posts

  • Requirements Types
  • User, Business, and Tech
Category: RequirementsTag: Requirements

About JD

Previous Post:Requirements Types
Next Post:What are the User, Business, and System Goals?

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. What are the User, Business, and System Goals? says:
    Jun 1, 2008 at 1:01 am

    […] Shifts of Power […]

Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • Best Software Books of All Time According to a Microsoft Exec
  • How To Effectively Pitch a Business Idea (Customer, Problem, Competition, and Success)
  • Customer-Connected Engineering at patterns & practices
  • Lessons in Software Development from Eric Brechner
  • Best Practices at patterns & practices

Popular Posts

Best Software Engineering Books
Best Practices for Project Management
Best Practices for Software Development
Customer-Connected Engineering
How To Frame Problems Better
How To Pitch Business Ideas Better
How To Structure Vision Scope Presentations
Intro to Lean Software Development
Lean Principles for Software Development
The Enterprise of the Future