I've found that often without connecting to actual measurements, it's easy for teams to do dozens of hours of effort where a single hour of that effort achieves the majority of the effect, because when measurements aren't used directly, people will often just throw energy at the problem until it "feels" done. Sometimes this even means all that effort accomplished nothing. This is why I'm such a big fan of Impact Mapping[1].
1. Impact Mapping: https://smile.amazon.com/Impact-Mapping-Software-Products-Pr...