An Aggregate Is a Function, Not a Sum
alnovis.ioI remember a story of a new IT director that came into an organization back in the mainframe era. He looked at the amount of money spent on greenbar paper printing reports and wondered just how much those reports are getting used. So he came up with a plan. All reports would get placed in his office and people would sign them out. Ultimately they found out that over 90% of the reports were never being read.
I've always wondered how we can do that in the present day. I would imagine most organizations would probably find out they're actually still able to fit neatly inside a dBase III for DOS application.
Behind each report was a legitimate idea how this report can provide a feedback loop to an organisation and improve system in some way or another. However, people forget, get distracted, change their minds, get lazy.
People asking for reports usually don't understands the dev cost of what it takes to create one. You give the finished report to them a week or two later and they never log in.