Last night I was listening to a recent HanselMinutes pod casts where he was talking with Tom & Mary Poppendiek.  For those of you who do not know who Tom & Mary are, they are the 2 behind a lot of the lean software movement (books here & here).

There was a statement made in the episode by Tom that really stuck to me and actually caused me to have a 'ah-ha' moment.  The statement that Tom made was that we as developers tend to refer to business owners as 'The Business' in place of referring to them as 'Our Business'.

The difference may seem subtle, but in actually it is quite substantial.  By referring to business as 'The Business' we are making the statement that we have no say or no influence in the decisions being made or the direction to be taken.  It also implies that we as developers (or IT personal in general) are in some way inferior to the people making the decisions. 

When we refer to the business as 'Our Business' we are doing multiple things.  First we are saying that we have ownership and knowledge in the business and have the ability to not just code, but to make decisions.  We are also saying that we have more ownership in the product by including ourselves in the 'Business'

The differences between the terms 'The Business' and 'Our Business' may seem small, but in reality they are huge.  Think about, reflect on it.  Let me know your thoughts.

Till next time,

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