> I’ll claim the ones in the end that will have that responsibility [to figure out if you're building the right thing] will be engineers.
One can have this stance. But in practice, programmers who have strong opinions on this topic that is not aligned to the management wishes will commonly become personae non gratae in the company, and are thus commonly on the brink of getting fired.
So, in the end, the incentives that exist in most companies are strongly biased towards the position that figuring out if you're building the right thing is the job of the managers and product owners. :-(
One can have this stance. But in practice, programmers who have strong opinions on this topic that is not aligned to the management wishes will commonly become personae non gratae in the company, and are thus commonly on the brink of getting fired.
So, in the end, the incentives that exist in most companies are strongly biased towards the position that figuring out if you're building the right thing is the job of the managers and product owners. :-(