Here some reasons I have seen why nobody has a clue about value...

* Often the financials of a company are "need to know" or obfuscated (Y-Axis unannotated)... * The financials are regarded as irrelevant to engineering (by management, finance AND engineering) * The estimates of where the value lies is often just a spreadsheet sucked out of the thumb of somebody in marketing who already has a eye on his next job. * Nobody _ever_ goes back and closes the loop and evaluate the value estimations and the value estimation process, so the company never learns to do better. * Let a drooling slob of an engineer talk to a customer? You're joking Right?

And yet engineer is all about tradeoffs, we make several per day under the illusion we know which are wise....