> ask the business people, "how long can we spend on this without losing money on it?" Presumably you'd want the developers "How much value can you create in t

> ask the business people, "how long can we spend on this without losing money on it?" Presumably you'd want the developers "How much value can you create in time `t`", v(t), and the business people "how much money will we lose in time `t`", l(t). And then you'll find the maximum of `v(t)-l(t)`. The problem of course is how much communication it takes between the two groups to optimize this. And how well they can actually estimate.