An engineer friend told me about a development project that completely killed their motivation.

Listing the rough problems:

• Business scale is unclear
• Business content has no synergy with existing e-commerce site
• Market research hasn't been done
• Revenue estimates haven't been calculated

From what I heard, it felt like the wise decision would be not to do it since it’s not worth allocating development resources to. It’s too sloppy to submit a business proposal without interviewing existing customer needs or thinking through the numbers - they need to try harder.

My friend said they were filled with disappointment because, after a long time, a development project had emerged that completely killed their motivation. The fact that engineers have to ask “Is there any point in doing this development?” in meetings they participate in says it all…

The company’s CTO apparently said, “Submitting business proposals that in-house engineers can’t get behind is already a failure.”

Before asking engineers for development effort estimates, business proposers should do what they need to do themselves, like producing their own numbers.

That’s all from the Gemba.