Building the right thing and having a good outcome from a software project requires all sides to be wilfully collaborating in a creative and enthusiastic fashion. That may seem obvious and easy but the IT industry has a legacy culture to deal with. It's not uncommon for both sides to be evaluated on meeting deadlines and budget constraints but not always on costs saved or revenue generated by the outcome of a software project. Of course measuring outcomes isn't always easy and bringing people together to collaborate meaningfully when they may also have other day to day tasks to get done is a similar challenge. However in the world of software product development it's people working together that often transforms the outcome and this month our two speakers Simon Cookson and Simeon Smith are both drilling into upstream end of the product development pipeline.