@jasongorman I called that you'll respond this way, but at that step of system design it is irresponsible to answer anything but "we will see". Unless you define application as "a system that addresses a need of users", but then your poll is kind of rigged? I personally consider batch data processing application that runs on some cluster "an application".

@jonn Batch data processing doesn't have users? I worked on mainframe systems many years ago, and I'm pretty sure somebody wanted those reports in the morning 🙂

@jasongorman first, there is more to stakeholder analysis than just users though. And addressing the need sometimes creates new users and removes old users. In some cases, if you only think about users before starting application design, you are unlikely to make something novel.

Also, in dreaded agile, sometimes the need is actually to create an easily iterable system to explore a domain! Each iteration shall have its set of users, but designs shall be checked against how agile they are!