Market driven development

"We must have market driven development", they said. "Technology is merely a tool; technology driven development will not bring us world domination."

There is nothing wrong with the idea of market driven development per se, on the contrary. I've seen too many technically successful projects be a failure in the end because the business case was weak or non-existent.

The problem is that market driven development is not best handled by marketing people. Unless all disciplines that contribute to the final result are involved, market driven development easily becomes governed by the discussions from the last customer call.

Furthermore, if some development wasn't at least inspired by technology (or other disciplines), we would miss some great functionality that marketing needs simply can't envision.