Ask the team what their goals are. Can they tell you? Do they understand why those are the goals? If they don’t understand the goals of their work, their leaders (manager, tech lead, product manager) aren’t doing a good job engaging the team in the purpose of the work. In almost every model of motivation, people need to feel an understanding and connection with the purpose of their work. Who are they building these systems for; what is the potential impact on the customer, the business, the team? Did they have any part in deciding these goals, and the projects that they’re doing to achieve them? If not, why not? When you see a team spending all of their time on engineering-sponsored projects and neglecting product/business projects, it’s likely that the team doesn’t appreciate or understand the value of the product/business projects they’re supposed to be working on, and therefore they lack the motivation to tackle them.