ROI is income/cost. The money customers pay for the software is income, and the money you spend on software developers, offices etc. is cost. Companies typicall

ROI is income/cost. The money customers pay for the software is income, and the money you spend on software developers, offices etc. is cost. Companies typically use quarterly or yearly ROI calculations to guide decisions. And yes all plans and speculations are based on assumptions and beliefs about the future. Obviously. ROI is what you use to measure if your assumption/beliefs are correct after you make a change. For example, the claim that spending $ making the software more understandable will increase ROI is easily tested. However what you really need to test against is the ROI of spending the same $ adding features instead. The article argues that the ROI of improving the software always in all cases is a better ROI than any other possible investment. That is simply not true.