How I Justify a Single Feature's ROI in Research Software

When a CEO asks me to defend the cost of one feature in a research platform, I start by reframing what "value" means for expert users. Scientists and PhD researchers are not casual customers churning over a missing button — they stay or leave based on whether the tool respects their time and expertise. So the ROI of a feature lives in the friction it removes from work that is otherwise unavoidable. Take a powerful query builder over a complex dataset. On the surface it's an engineering line item. In practice, it replaces hours of manual export-to-spreadsheet rituals, reduces the analytical errors that quietly poison published results, and turns a senior researcher's scarce attention back toward the science. I push to measure ROI qualitatively before quantitatively: which recurring task does this feature collapse, how many expert roles touch it, and how often. A feature that shaves friction off a daily power-user workflow compounds far more than a flashy capability used once a quarter. My recommendation to leadership is consistent — fund the features that sit on the critical path of expert work, and let the convenience extras wait.