> developers rarely put themselves in the shoes of the business side
The simplest solution to this is to make them an actual part of your business. Do your lead devs assist business meetings ? do the dev team get the numbers, get a look at the budget, work with you on the roadmap, look at the user research and brainstorm the features with the business and UX people ?
If not, why would you expect them to understand the business ?
The other side of that dev/business separation: as you put it, that creates a holy land of software development, as everyone has their own silo while expecting other specialists to be well versed into their own problematics.
I think many businesses are working dispite extremely siloed roles for their team members, and people tend to think that's an OK way of doing things as money keeps flowing in.
Bridging that gap can be difficult. I always try to include leads in business meetings, provide weekly reports on how their work is performing (do users actually like the feature that was built? Is it generating revenue for the company, etc...) I've found teams generally are excited at first, but then immediately start complaining about "more meetings," getting told "You're the PM, why are you asking me, you write the specs"
It definitely needs to be a 2-way bridge, and when both sides can and do come together, great things can happen!
The simplest solution to this is to make them an actual part of your business. Do your lead devs assist business meetings ? do the dev team get the numbers, get a look at the budget, work with you on the roadmap, look at the user research and brainstorm the features with the business and UX people ?
If not, why would you expect them to understand the business ?
The other side of that dev/business separation: as you put it, that creates a holy land of software development, as everyone has their own silo while expecting other specialists to be well versed into their own problematics.
I think many businesses are working dispite extremely siloed roles for their team members, and people tend to think that's an OK way of doing things as money keeps flowing in.