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Microsoft Office remains deeply embedded in the daily operations of enterprises, financial institutions, professional services firms, healthcare organizations, manufacturers, legal practices, educational institutions, and thousands of other businesses. Even as organizations adopt cloud applications, AI assistants, SaaS platforms, and modern web applications, Microsoft Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, and related Office applications continue to sit at the center of many business workflows.
That creates an interesting development challenge.
A business may already have sophisticated software, but employees may still spend hours moving information between an internal application and Excel. They may manually prepare Word documents from database records, copy customer information into Outlook messages, generate reports, format spreadsheets, or reconcile information between Office documents and enterprise systems.
Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office, commonly known as VSTO, can address many of these workflow problems by enabling developers to build Office customizations and add-ins using the .NET ecosystem.
But there is an important business question behind the technology:
Is hiring a dedicated VSTO developer actually worth the investment?
The answer depends on the type of Office integration you need, how deeply Office is connected to your business processes, how long the solution will be maintained, the complexity of deployment and security requirements, and whether the organization has sufficient internal expertise.
For a simple one-time Office customization, hiring a dedicated specialist may not always make financial sense. For a business-critical Excel, Word, Outlook, or Office automation platform that will evolve over several years, specialized VSTO expertise can potentially deliver substantially more value than treating Office development as a small side task for a generalist developer.
The real decision therefore should not be based only on a developer’s hourly or monthly rate.
It should be based on total business value, development risk, maintenance requirements, integration complexity, employee productivity, deployment requirements, and expected lifespan of the solution.
Before deciding whether dedicated VSTO development is worth the investment, it is important to understand what VSTO development involves.
A VSTO developer works with Microsoft’s Office development ecosystem and typically uses technologies such as:
The developer may build software that lives inside an Office application or connects Office applications with another business system.
For example, consider an organization that operates a loan management platform.
Employees may currently:
A properly designed Office integration could automate significant portions of that workflow.
An Excel add-in might retrieve customer information directly from the enterprise system.
A Word solution could populate a standardized document.
An Outlook integration could prepare an email based on approved business information.
Instead of employees acting as the connection between multiple systems, the software becomes the connection.
That is where the economic argument for specialized VSTO development becomes stronger.
A dedicated VSTO developer is not simply a developer who knows C#.
The term generally refers to a developer allocated specifically to your project or organization for a defined period.
Depending on the engagement model, that developer may work:
A dedicated developer can focus on understanding your Office workflows, business rules, APIs, data structures, deployment model, security requirements, and user expectations.
That continuity can be valuable.
A developer who works on an Office integration for six months may understand its architecture far more deeply than a developer who spends two days fixing an isolated issue.
This distinction matters because Office integrations often contain hidden complexity.
A solution that appears to be “just an Excel add-in” may actually involve:
Consequently, the cost of a developer should be evaluated against the entire lifecycle of the application.
Office applications remain attractive development targets because they are already familiar to employees.
Imagine a finance department that has spent ten years building sophisticated Excel-based processes.
Replacing everything with a new web interface may technically be possible, but it could involve:
A well-designed Office integration can sometimes improve an existing workflow without forcing employees to abandon the environment they already understand.
That creates several potential benefits.
Employees already understand spreadsheets, Word documents, email, and presentations.
An add-in can introduce additional functionality without requiring users to learn an entirely new application.
For example, an Excel ribbon could provide buttons such as:
The employee continues working in Excel.
The software simply extends what Excel can do.
Manual data entry is one of the most common sources of operational inefficiency.
A VSTO solution can potentially retrieve data from:
Instead of repeatedly copying and pasting information, employees can interact with centralized data through the Office interface.
Organizations often discover that different employees perform the same task differently.
One employee may format a report one way.
Another may use a different formula.
A third may forget a required field.
An Office add-in can introduce standardized workflows.
For example, a financial reporting add-in could:
This does not eliminate the need for human review.
Instead, it can reduce avoidable process variation.
A business does not necessarily need to replace its existing applications to modernize an Office workflow.
A VSTO developer can work on integrations between Office and existing systems.
Possible connections include:
The Office application becomes one interface into a broader technology ecosystem.
Hiring a dedicated specialist can be justified when Office is not merely a productivity application but an important part of the organization’s operational workflow.
Several circumstances can strengthen the business case.
If employees spend large portions of their working day inside Excel, specialized development may produce meaningful operational improvements.
Common examples include:
The more important Excel becomes to the workflow, the more valuable specialized automation can become.
A strong API layer makes Office integration considerably more practical.
Suppose your organization already has:
A dedicated developer can potentially connect these services with Excel, Word, or Outlook.
The resulting solution can provide employees with a familiar interface while using centralized enterprise data.
Repetitive workflows are strong candidates for automation.
Consider an employee who spends 20 minutes preparing every customer report.
If that employee prepares 15 reports per day, the process consumes approximately:
20 × 15 = 300 minutes
That equals five hours of work per day.
Even if only part of that process can be automated, the potential productivity impact may be significant.
Now multiply the same process across:
The economic case becomes easier to evaluate.
The important point is not that automation automatically produces savings.
The important point is that the business can calculate the opportunity.
A business-critical Office application deserves a different development approach from a temporary internal macro.
For example, an organization may depend on an Excel application for:
If failure could interrupt operations, development quality, testing, monitoring, deployment, and support become much more important.
That can justify dedicated expertise.
One of the most important questions businesses ask is whether they actually need a VSTO specialist.
After all, VSTO development commonly uses C# and .NET.
So why not assign the project to any experienced .NET developer?
The answer is that programming language knowledge and Office platform expertise are not the same thing.
A strong .NET developer may be excellent at:
But that does not automatically mean they understand:
These areas can require specialized experience.
A VSTO developer combines general software engineering knowledge with Office-specific expertise.
That combination can reduce the learning curve and potentially lower implementation risk.
When evaluating candidates, organizations should look beyond the phrase “VSTO developer.”
A strong candidate should ideally demonstrate multiple categories of expertise.
Look for practical knowledge of:
These fundamentals form the foundation of maintainable Office applications.
Relevant experience may include:
Modern Office solutions often need to communicate with external systems.
The developer should understand:
Depending on the application, experience with databases may also be useful.
Relevant technologies can include:
Security should not be treated as an afterthought.
A VSTO developer may need to understand:
A solution can work perfectly on a developer’s computer and still fail during enterprise deployment.
The developer should understand the target organization’s deployment environment and requirements.
Relevant considerations include:
The decision should be based on project complexity rather than job titles.
A generalist may be perfectly capable of handling a small Office automation task.
A dedicated VSTO specialist becomes more valuable when the project includes significant Office-specific complexity.
| Requirement | General .NET Developer | Dedicated VSTO Specialist |
| Basic C# development | Usually suitable | Suitable |
| REST API integration | Usually suitable | Suitable |
| Database development | Usually suitable | Suitable |
| Simple Excel automation | Potentially suitable | Strong fit |
| Complex Excel add-in | May require learning | Strong fit |
| Outlook integration | Depends on experience | Strong fit |
| Office-specific deployment | May require ramp-up | Stronger fit |
| Complex Office events | Depends on experience | Stronger fit |
| Long-term Office product | Possible | Strong fit |
| Business-critical Office integration | Depends on background | Strong fit |
| Enterprise Office customization | Depends on experience | Strong fit |
The table does not mean every VSTO specialist is better than every generalist.
Experience should be evaluated against the actual requirements of the project.
The most useful way to answer the question “Is hiring a dedicated VSTO developer worth it?” is to calculate expected return on investment.
A simplified ROI model can begin with:
ROI = (Business Benefit – Development Investment) ÷ Development Investment × 100
However, business benefit should not be limited to direct labor savings.
A more comprehensive model considers:
For example, suppose an organization invests in a dedicated developer to automate a repetitive reporting workflow.
The project investment could include:
The benefits could include:
The correct question becomes:
What measurable business improvement will the software create over its useful life?
Imagine 30 employees use an Excel-based workflow.
Each employee spends approximately 45 minutes per working day performing repetitive data preparation.
That represents:
30 × 45 = 1,350 minutes per day
or:
22.5 hours per day
If automation reduces that workload by 60%, the organization could potentially recover:
13.5 employee-hours per working day
At approximately 220 working days per year, that represents:
2,970 employee-hours annually
The financial value depends on the organization’s fully loaded employee cost and how the recovered time is used.
If employees use that time for higher-value activities, the benefit may extend beyond simple labor-cost calculations.
However, businesses should avoid assuming that every saved hour becomes a direct cash saving.
If employees remain on payroll, the more accurate benefit may be increased capacity rather than reduced payroll.
That distinction is important when building a credible business case.
A common mistake in automation ROI calculations is treating productivity improvements as immediate financial savings.
Suppose an automated process saves 1,000 employee-hours.
There are several possible outcomes:
If the organization can genuinely eliminate paid labor associated with the process, savings may be directly measurable.
Employees remain employed but can process more customers or transactions.
The financial benefit comes from increased business capacity.
Employees can respond more quickly to customers.
The benefit may appear through customer satisfaction, retention, or improved service-level performance.
Employees spend less time on repetitive administration and more time on analysis, sales, client service, or decision-making.
The value may be strategic rather than immediately visible on the payroll.
A good VSTO business case should identify which category applies.
The exact cost depends on several variables.
There is no universally correct VSTO developer rate.
Pricing may vary according to:
A developer who handles only basic Excel automation should not necessarily command the same rate as someone responsible for a complex enterprise Office platform.
Likewise, the cheapest developer is not necessarily the lowest-cost option.
A low hourly rate can become expensive if the project requires extensive rework.
Businesses generally have several options when sourcing VSTO expertise.
A freelancer can be useful for:
The business typically has more direct control over the individual.
However, there can be challenges involving:
A dedicated developer supplied by a development company can provide a middle ground between direct hiring and project outsourcing.
Potential advantages include:
For organizations that need ongoing development but do not want to build an internal VSTO team, this model can be practical.
Companies evaluating dedicated software development partners can also consider specialists such as Abbacus Technologies when they need dedicated engineering capacity and broader .NET development support.
Hiring a VSTO developer as a full-time employee can make sense when Office development is strategically important and demand is expected to remain high.
The company gains:
But total employment cost includes much more than salary.
Potential costs include:
A project-based engagement may be appropriate when the company has a clearly defined requirement.
For example:
The agency takes responsibility for delivering defined outcomes.
This can be useful when the organization does not need permanent development capacity.
The distinction is important.
Suppose your requirement is:
“Build an Excel add-in that retrieves data from our API and generates a standardized report.”
A project-based engagement could be suitable.
But suppose the requirement is:
“We need continuous development of our Excel and Outlook ecosystem, including new integrations, maintenance, bug fixing, user requests, security improvements, deployment support, and future modernization.”
A dedicated developer or dedicated team may be more appropriate.
The difference is essentially:
Project-based development = buy a defined outcome.
Dedicated development = buy ongoing engineering capacity.
A balanced analysis must also identify situations where hiring a dedicated specialist may be unnecessary.
Not every Office automation requirement justifies a dedicated developer.
If you need a tiny one-time customization, hiring a dedicated developer for months would probably be excessive.
Alternatives could include:
The objective should be to match development capacity to actual demand.
If employees rarely use Office applications in important workflows, investing heavily in VSTO development may have limited business value.
A dedicated specialist becomes harder to justify when the underlying business process itself is not strategically important.
Suppose the organization plans to migrate from a legacy Excel process to a new web application within six months.
Building a large VSTO platform immediately before that migration may create unnecessary technical debt.
The right decision may instead be to build only temporary automation needed during the transition.
If your internal development team already includes experienced Office developers, hiring another dedicated specialist may not provide sufficient incremental value.
Instead, the organization might need:
The requirement should determine the engagement.
Developer cost is only one side of the equation.
The cost of poor implementation can be much higher.
A developer without sufficient Office experience may create software that:
The initial development invoice may look attractive.
The lifecycle cost may not be.
This is why technical due diligence matters.
Office applications can become complex because the user interface, Office host application, business logic, external services, and data systems may all interact.
A well-designed architecture should separate concerns.
For example:
Office UI
↓
Application Layer
↓
Business Logic
↓
API / Integration Layer
↓
Enterprise Systems
This separation can make future maintenance easier.
Instead of embedding every business rule directly inside Excel event handlers, the developer can isolate core logic in reusable components.
That makes the system easier to test and potentially easier to migrate later.
One of the biggest risks in Office automation is turning an Excel workbook into an entire enterprise application.
Over time, teams may add:
Eventually, nobody fully understands how the workbook works.
A dedicated developer should help establish architectural boundaries.
For example:
The objective is not simply to make an Excel file work.
It is to build maintainable software.
Many organizations do not start with a clean architecture.
They inherit older Office solutions.
These may contain:
A dedicated developer can be valuable during modernization because they can first understand the existing system before replacing components.
A sensible modernization process may involve:
Modernization does not always mean rewriting everything.
Incremental improvement can reduce operational risk.
Compatibility is another factor that affects development cost.
A solution may need to operate across different:
Testing only on the developer’s machine is insufficient for an enterprise solution.
A professional development process should define the supported environment before implementation.
Important questions include:
These questions affect architecture and deployment planning.
One of the most underestimated areas of Office add-in development is deployment.
A solution can be technically complete and still fail because the organization cannot distribute it reliably.
A dedicated developer should understand the deployment lifecycle.
That includes:
Deployment should be designed early, not added at the end of the project.
Testing Office integrations can require more than conventional unit testing.
A robust quality strategy may include:
For example, an Excel add-in may pass unit tests but fail when interacting with an actual workbook containing:
Testing should reflect realistic usage.
Office automation can become slow when developers repeatedly communicate with the Office object model.
For example, processing cells one at a time may be much less efficient than working with larger ranges where appropriate.
Performance optimization can involve:
The exact optimization depends on the application.
A dedicated VSTO developer who understands Office-specific performance behavior can identify these issues earlier.
Office integrations can handle sensitive information.
Examples include:
Security therefore needs to be part of architecture rather than an afterthought.
A security-conscious development approach should consider:
Developers should never embed passwords or sensitive API credentials directly inside source code or Office documents.
One reason businesses struggle to evaluate dedicated developers is that they focus heavily on hours worked.
Hours are not the final business outcome.
A developer may spend time:
Those activities may not immediately produce a visible feature.
Yet they can reduce future maintenance costs.
Therefore, businesses should evaluate the developer based on outcomes such as:
Not every VSTO project requires multiple engineers.
A single experienced developer may be sufficient when:
A team may be appropriate when the project involves:
A possible team structure could include:
The team should be scaled according to actual complexity.
Excel is one of the most common reasons organizations investigate VSTO.
An Excel add-in can extend the application with functionality tailored to business processes.
Potential capabilities include:
A dedicated developer becomes particularly valuable when the Excel add-in is connected to an enterprise system.
For example, a company may create a financial analysis add-in that allows authorized employees to retrieve approved financial data directly into predefined worksheets.
The developer may need to manage:
That is substantially more complex than writing a simple macro.
Outlook can also serve as an important business interface.
Potential use cases include:
For example, an employee could select an email and use an add-in to retrieve the related customer account from an internal CRM.
The system could then display:
The employee does not need to manually switch between multiple systems.
The value comes from reducing context switching and simplifying the workflow.
Word automation can be particularly useful for document-heavy industries.
Potential applications include:
A system could retrieve structured data and populate a standardized Word document.
Instead of manually copying dozens of fields, employees could generate a document using approved templates.
This can improve consistency while reducing repetitive work.
PowerPoint is less frequently discussed in Office automation conversations, but it can also be integrated into business workflows.
Potential applications include:
For example, a sales organization could generate standardized presentations from approved customer or sales data.
Again, the value depends on usage volume and process complexity.
The strongest business cases often involve integration.
Imagine a company with:
Without integration, employees may manually transfer information between systems.
With integration, the workflow could become:
Enterprise System → API → Office Add-In → Employee Workflow
This architecture can reduce repetitive data movement.
The Office application becomes a user-facing layer rather than the system of record.
That distinction is important.
The central enterprise application should generally remain responsible for authoritative business data, while the Office integration provides an efficient working interface.
The business value of a dedicated VSTO developer is often strongest when the developer automates high-frequency, repetitive workflows.
A useful prioritization framework considers:
| Factor | Low Priority | High Priority |
| Frequency | Monthly | Daily or hourly |
| Manual effort | Few minutes | Several hours |
| User count | 1 to 2 | Dozens or hundreds |
| Error impact | Low | High |
| Business importance | Low | Critical |
| Process stability | Constantly changing | Well defined |
| Data availability | Manual | API accessible |
| Automation potential | Low | High |
A high-frequency process used by many employees is generally easier to justify than an occasional task used by one person.
Before signing an agreement, decision-makers should answer several questions.
Ask candidates to explain:
The goal is to understand whether they have actually solved comparable problems.
A portfolio can reveal more than a resume.
Look for evidence of projects involving:
Ask candidates to describe:
A developer who can clearly explain technical decisions demonstrates deeper practical understanding than someone who simply lists technologies.
Businesses should be cautious when a candidate:
None of these points alone proves that a candidate is unsuitable.
They are signals that deserve further investigation.
Hiring a developer before understanding the problem can produce unnecessary expense.
Before recruiting, document:
Even a basic requirements document can significantly improve developer selection.
A discovery workshop can cover the following.
The contract should clearly define ownership and responsibilities.
Important areas include:
A dedicated developer relationship works best when expectations are explicit.
Businesses should clarify who owns:
This should be established contractually before development begins.
Documentation is often neglected because it does not immediately produce visible features.
But Office integrations can be particularly difficult to maintain when the original developer leaves.
Useful documentation may cover:
The goal is to prevent the organization from becoming dependent on one person’s memory.
Even when a dedicated developer remains on the project, the organization should avoid creating a single-person dependency.
Knowledge transfer can include:
A sustainable project should be understandable by more than one person.
Development is only the beginning.
An Office integration may require ongoing work related to:
Therefore, the initial project budget should include a maintenance strategy.
The strongest justification for dedicated capacity often appears when the Office solution is becoming a product rather than a simple automation script.
For example, a company may build an Excel-based platform used by hundreds of employees.
Over time, it may need:
At this point, ongoing engineering capacity becomes more valuable than a one-time development project.
A simple break-even calculation can help management understand the investment.
Suppose:
Development investment = $60,000
and estimated annual business benefit is:
$30,000 per year
Then the simple payback period is approximately:
$60,000 ÷ $30,000 = 2 years
But this calculation should include realistic assumptions.
Potential benefits may increase over time as more employees adopt the solution.
Maintenance costs should also be included.
The calculation should therefore be treated as a planning model rather than a guarantee.
A common mistake is evaluating a developer only against the first few months.
Suppose an Office integration remains important for five years.
The organization may receive value from:
The cumulative value can be significantly different from the first-year calculation.
This is why expected application lifespan matters.
Productivity is not only about saving minutes.
Poor internal software creates frustration.
Employees may dislike processes involving:
An Office add-in can simplify some of these interactions.
Because users continue working in familiar applications, adoption may be easier than introducing an entirely new interface.
However, usability still matters.
A poorly designed add-in can make Excel or Outlook more confusing rather than less.
A dedicated developer should not work entirely from technical requirements.
They should understand actual users.
Useful discovery activities include:
Ask employees:
These answers can reveal automation opportunities that technical teams might otherwise miss.
The investment tends to become easier to justify when several conditions occur simultaneously:
When only one or two of these conditions exist, a smaller engagement may be sufficient.
A dedicated long-term developer is not always necessary.
A short-term specialist can be appropriate for:
After the specialist completes the work, an internal team can continue development.
This model can reduce long-term staffing requirements.
When uncertainty is high, a proof of concept can reduce risk.
Instead of immediately committing to a large implementation, build a narrow prototype.
For example:
Phase 1
Connect Excel to one API.
Phase 2
Retrieve a limited dataset.
Phase 3
Display it in a controlled worksheet.
Phase 4
Validate performance.
Phase 5
Test authentication.
Phase 6
Test deployment.
The proof of concept should answer critical technical questions.
It should not become an excuse to endlessly prototype without moving toward production.
A practical roadmap can be divided into stages.
Rather than deploying to an entire organization immediately, consider a pilot group.
For example:
Collect:
Then refine the product before broad deployment.
A VSTO project should have measurable KPIs.
Potential metrics include:
The exact metrics depend on the business process.
For example, if the project aims to reduce report preparation time, measure report preparation time before and after implementation.
Technical metrics can include:
Technical KPIs should support business outcomes rather than becoming metrics for their own sake.
Business metrics might include:
A strong development project connects technical improvements to business metrics.
One advantage of dedicated development is continuity.
After launch, users will request changes.
For example:
A developer already familiar with the system can respond more efficiently than a new developer starting from scratch.
This accumulated knowledge is one of the less obvious benefits of dedicated development.
Continuity is valuable, but dependency is dangerous.
The organization should maintain:
The developer should be an important contributor, not the only person capable of understanding the system.
Agile development can work well for Office integrations because user workflows often become clearer during implementation.
A sprint might focus on:
After each increment, users can provide feedback.
This reduces the risk of building a technically correct application that does not fit the real workflow.
Office projects can grow rapidly.
A basic Excel add-in can become:
Without scope control, costs can increase quickly.
A strong roadmap should distinguish:
Must have
from:
Should have
and:
Future enhancement
This helps protect the initial investment.
Technical debt can accumulate when developers prioritize speed over maintainability.
Examples include:
Some technical debt is acceptable.
The problem occurs when technical debt makes every future change expensive.
Dedicated developers can help manage this debt because they have ongoing responsibility for the codebase.
The choice can be based on complexity.
Potentially appropriate for:
Potentially appropriate for:
Potentially appropriate for:
Team size should follow workload, not arbitrary staffing formulas.
Before approving dedicated VSTO development, executives can ask:
If these questions cannot be answered, the project may need more discovery before staffing.
A useful internal assessment can examine six dimensions.
Ask whether the Office workflow is operationally important.
Determine how much manual work can realistically be eliminated or reduced.
Assess Office integration, APIs, databases, security, and deployment.
Estimate how long the application will remain relevant.
Determine whether current employees can maintain the solution.
Estimate future feature requests, maintenance, and support.
A high score across these dimensions indicates a stronger case for dedicated engineering capacity.
| Situation | Potential Engagement |
| Tiny one-time automation | Short-term specialist |
| Simple Excel integration | Freelance or short project |
| Medium Excel add-in | Dedicated developer |
| Complex Excel + API system | Dedicated developer or small team |
| Excel + Word + Outlook platform | Dedicated team |
| Enterprise Office ecosystem | Long-term dedicated team |
| Legacy Office modernization | Specialist-led project followed by ongoing support |
| Continuous Office product development | Dedicated engineering capacity |
This is not a universal rule.
The actual architecture, workload, budget, and business requirements should determine the appropriate model.
When a company hires a dedicated VSTO developer, it is not simply buying programming hours.
It is buying some combination of:
That distinction changes how the investment should be evaluated.
A developer who spends 160 hours implementing a feature is not necessarily equivalent to another developer who spends 160 hours.
Experience can influence:
Hourly cost is only one component of total cost.
Consider two hypothetical developers.
Developer A:
Developer B:
If Developer A requires extensive rework, the initial rate advantage can disappear.
Total cost should therefore consider:
Development + Rework + Maintenance + Downtime + Support + Future Changes
not simply:
Hourly Rate × Hours
A realistic TCO model can include:
This provides a more realistic view of whether the investment is justified.
Hiring the right developer is only the beginning.
The organization should provide:
A developer waiting days for API credentials or business clarification is not a productive use of engineering capacity.
Developers should not operate in isolation.
Regular interaction with users can help identify:
This is particularly important for Office solutions because employees often develop informal workflows that are not documented anywhere.
A dedicated developer should have a clear technical counterpart.
That person can:
Clear ownership prevents decisions from becoming fragmented.
The value of a dedicated VSTO developer depends less on the technology itself and more on the business problem being solved.
For a company with minimal Office automation requirements, a dedicated developer may be unnecessary.
For a company whose employees depend heavily on Excel, Word, Outlook, or other Office applications and repeatedly perform manual, error-prone workflows, specialized development can be a meaningful investment.
The strongest business cases generally involve a combination of:
The decision should ultimately be based on measurable economics.
Calculate the current process cost.
Estimate realistic automation potential.
Estimate development and maintenance costs.
Identify the expected lifespan.
Define measurable KPIs.
Then compare the investment against the expected business impact.
A dedicated VSTO developer is not automatically the right answer.
But when Office is deeply embedded in business operations, treating VSTO development as a minor scripting task can create unnecessary technical and operational risk.
The better approach is to treat the Office integration as a real software product with architecture, testing, security, deployment, documentation, maintenance, and measurable business outcomes.
That is where specialized VSTO expertise can move from being an additional development expense to becoming an important engineering capability.