People tend to look at budgets the wrong way, IMO. The cost of software development per unit time (your engineering-dept. budget) is trivial to figure. Number of people * salary * load. There. You're done. You'll pay that out even if everybody sits around playing Canasta all day. So, the question is NOT what engineering it will cost; it's how best to use people's time to get the maximum benefit from that investment. Instead of a project, think in terms of what to work on. Bring people to the work, not work to the people.

Source: x.com/allenholub/status/1824620155928039596