The one and only goal in software development is to provide useful, functional software that creates value for the customer or consumer. Period. End of story. Not open for discussion or opinions.

If you want to deliver software that the customer or consumer wants to use, likes to use, and ultimately does use to help solve problems and/or automate business process, etc, then you must know what the customer or consumer values. In other words - you can't identify your software's 'value' if you don't know who/what ALL of your customers are.

I'd put money down to say that most software developers - perhaps most software development companies - have no clue how many customers and consumers there really are for any given software project. The one consistent answer that I would expect from every developer or company is that the person, group, or company paying money for the software is the customer. This is 100%, absolutely true. In addition to the paying customer, though, there are many other customers or consumers that need to be identified.

As a starter, consider the following list for the customers / consumers of your software:

• The paying customer
• Integrated external systems
• API consuming systems
• Software Testers and Test Lab personnel
• Technical and documentation writers
• Software developers (the ones writing the code!)

I know, I know... how could a software developer possibly be considered a customer or consumer of the software that they are writing? The answer should be obvious - who reads and writes the code? who maintains the code and needs to understand how the code is structured so it can be maintained? If you don't believe that your software developers are first class consumers of the system that they are writing, I would bet that you have a horribly complex kludge of code that no one wants to work on. If your developers are considered first class consumers of the code they are writing, I would bet that your team is happy and is constantly working toward better code - simple, readable, maintainable systems that are fun to work on.

So, who are your customers or consumers? What value do they need in your system and from your system? And, how are you and your team responding to those value needs (if at all)?