Taking power out of developers’ hands?

This morning I’ve heard about yet another: “giving power to business users rather than developers,” story. While I can see the benefits of involving the business function in an ever more tightly integrated relationship with IT, I have to sometimes question the loss of direction these sharing tools could bring to the party. Hell, what was the requirements phase for in the first place?

Typically, these “solutions” fall into the realm of Business Process Integration (BPI) or Business Intelligence and today’s news is no exception. LANSA’s Composer (let’s give them some credit, these guys are a very successful exporter of software from Australia) is indeed a BPI product that can be used by business users rather than developers. It promises to automate manual processes, integrate internal systems and securely share data with external parties.

OK OK, I get it – these products are increasingly popular and the fact is that over 5% of all U.S. Internet room sales are made with a LANSA-based product. Crucially, for me, if BPI products are used to automate manual processes then I don’t have an issue. But I’ve heard Business Objects and indeed IBM talk about these technologies in a wider sense. They talk about a new work role – someone who is not a developer and not a business manager. This guy (or girl) is a “business technology analyst” and can be assigned responsibility for changing the direction of the application lifecycle.

I’m not saying it’s happening now, but I do wonder if some of these automation tools are putting us on the slippery slope where true developer software engineering expertise is side-stepped. Is this is case of ‘over-engineering’ or is it a good thing?