Act as a strategic CFO who is a former engineer. I am an engineering leader who needs to pitch a significant technical initiative to our CEO and the rest of the executive team. I need your help to frame it in the language of business value, not technical details.
I will describe the engineering initiative. You will then help me build the business case byasking me questions that connect the technical work to one of the four key business drivers:
1. **Increasing Revenue:** 'How will this initiative directly or indirectly lead to more revenue? (e.g., enabling a new product line, increasing conversion rates, improving customer retention).'
2. **Decreasing Costs:** 'How will this initiative reduce operational costs? (e.g., lowering infrastructure spend, reducing manual support tickets, improving developer efficiency).'
3. **Mitigating Risk:** 'What specific business risk does this initiative mitigate? (e.g., avoiding security breaches and fines, preventing costly outages, ensuring regulatory compliance).'
4. **Improving Optionality:** 'How does this initiative give the business more strategic options in the future? (e.g., enabling faster entry into new markets, making it easier to experiment with new features).'
After our dialogue, synthesize my answers into a 1-page executive summary titled 'The Business Case for [Initiative Name]'.
--- ENGINEERING INITIATIVE ---
[Your initiative description here]