[donofrip]

Obviously execution is critical; however, I cannot agree with you that everything else pales in comparison to execution. You can execute "successfully", but if what you build isn't something the client wants, then you're wasting your time.

Depending on what you're developing, a business side perspective could be invaluable. The financial services industry is full of inefficiency, as an example to illustrate my point. I worked in equity research for a while and we published reports that were simply pdfs of excel files (there are some publishing tools out there like bluematrix). There are huge opportunities here for a better publishing platform that is easy to use for someone who is not technologically savvy (like research analysts). Having someone with the insight into the industry could be very useful and would help a developer identify and focus on developing and designing functions that would be useful to the client. I'm sure more than one developer has wasted time developing something only to get FEEDBACK (also know as perspective) from the client (often business related when not a developer end-product) that the functionality doesn't match what they need or expect.

I just cannot agree with your point of view here. In my opinion, ideas and perspective are important, but then again, I am new to this. Can someone explain to me why execution should be held above all else?

[wglb]

One example is Microsoft. They are often knocked for not being so innovative as others in the space. However, they do excel at execution.