Custom development for CiviCRM: Worth it?

What should you do when you want something that's not possible in CiviCRM out-of-the-box, and there's no available extension that would do it for you?

Would creating an extension (or even modifying CiviCRM itself) be worth the investment?

It’s a trick question, I guess. Because it’s not really about CiviCRM.

“Is it worth it?” is one of the first questions you should ask any time you’re considering custom software of any kind.

But the real question is:

How would you even know if it's worth it?

How would you measure that?

If you know how you would measure it, you probably already have a sense of whether it would be worth it or not.

But if you don't know how to measure that, how could it possibly ever be worth it?

Here's the thing:

If you care about value, you have to have a way to measure it.

All the best,
A.