bradley-holt

It's not really up to IBM whether or not this shift towards more developer influence happens. IBM can either embrace this shift and benefit from it, or it can reject it and pretend it's not happening. Personally, I hope that IBM continues to accept and embrace this shift (which I am seeing many indications of). I hope that IBM continues to become more-and-more relevant to developers, but the proof is in the pudding.

I work for IBM as a Developer Advocate, though my opinions here are my own. One of my goals as a Developer Advocate is to represent the shift in buying power from "non-technical management" (as you described it) to individual developers and other technical staff. If those who have to use or have to integrate with the software are a part of the decision making process, then I believe that this will result in better quality software. IBM is a very large company, with many different offerings. However, I think you'll see this shift towards a developer-focused mindset happening more-and-more within IBM over the next few years.

Disagree. Your domain model is within the scope of your application. The code representing your domain model should be unit tested. If your application is doing anything interesting then the code for your domain model is the most important thing to test in your application.