This is an excerpt from one of Dan Hon's brilliant, "Things That Have Caught My Attention." Go sign up now: http://tinyletter.com/danhon
So here's a new model for software development that can become a cult and a whole bunch of people can follow. It's Enterprise Driven Software Development, and in it, everyone gets to pretend to be a castmember of Star Trek: The Next Generation and roleplays the kind of software that they're designing.
Look, it's really easy:
Counsellor Troi obviously speaks for the user because she's the empath. She's super in-touch with user needs and will tell you whether your users are feeling distress because of the confusing modal dialog you've just implemented.
Lieutenant Commander Worf is all about Verbing Things and Doing Action Now. Mainly, your software should make pew-pew noises.
Lieutenant Commander Data is the stakeholder who's going to point out that you literally said that the thing would do that thing and now it's not done that thing, you'll have to explain it to him like he's five, please.
Commander La Forge will purse his lips and basically tell you some sort of dev ops story about how you really shouldn't be using this to do that, but I suppose you could do, and then it all turns out to be fine apart from that one time the ship's computer became sentient and then we never spoke of it again.
Commander Riker just wants to know if you can a) hide porn in it, b) search for porn using it, c) turn it into some sort of subspace-range Tinder app or d) use it to play the trombone. He is essentially the troll, who will break your app.
Wesley Crusher is a reminder that everyone on your team - even the precocious teenager - is able to contribute solutions to the problem.
Doctor Crusher is there as a reminder that sexual tension is never a good idea on your team, and you should just keep it simmering for about seven years.
Captain Picard has an unswerving faith in daily stand-up meetings in his ready room and basically is the good kind of product director who cajoles every team member when needed, plays the flute in his downtime and has an idiosyncratic way of responding to Jira tickets by requesting that there be a "Make it so" option in the dropdown.