3 reasons to include developers in strategy meetings

I'll aim to keep this short and sweet:

“When you're building your strategy around the user, it changes the business imperatives. This world of Web services really is not about the technology itself, it's about business. The business issues are so much at play that they are really more important than the technology.” Herman Baumann quotes

In the end it's all about the business. Software. Strategy. Customer Support. Sales team. Project Managers. Developers. Techies.

Not a lot of software businesses get this and they opt to exclude developers from strategy meetings.

1. You can't code what you don't know
Programmers need to know the industry, because after all - you can't code what you don't know.

2. Know what works and what doesn't
Programmers, UI and UX designers are generally familiar with the needs of their users and are usually the first to know when something doesn't work the way it's supposed to.

3. We create things others use
In general, over a period of 3 years a developer working at a dev shop will probably gain experience developing up to or over 20 applications that consumers or businesses use. In essence, you could almost equate applications developed to businesses started 1 to 1 - or in this case 20 businesses.

Now, wouldn't it be silly to exclude the developers from strategy meetings?

After all, they are the ones who will be doing the work.