Having the privilege of working in software in the 2020s, I hear variations on the following ideas expressed frequently:

• ‘There must be some direct relationship between your work and customer value!’
• ‘The results of your actions must be measurable!’

These ideas manifest in statements like this, which sound very sensible and plausible:

• ‘This does not benefit the customer. This is not a feature to the customer. So we should not do it.’
• ‘We are not in the business of doing X, so should not focus on it. We are in the business of serving the customer’
• ‘This does not improve any of the key metrics we identified’

I want to challenge these ideas. In fact, I want to turn them on their head:

• Many peoples’ work generate value by focussing on things that appear to have no measurable or apparently justifiable customer benefit.
• Moreover, judgements on these matters are what…