People hear "Makefile" and assume you're compiling something. I've got Makefiles in repos that build a Hugo site, lint some YAML, and run a Python script on a schedule. Not a .c in sight. The point isn't compilation. The point is that make is the one command I can type from muscle memory in any directory, and make help tells me what this particular project can do.
The whole value is that I stop reinventing the same six shell incantations per repo. Six months from now I will not remember the exact docker run flags, or which virtualenv this thing wants. A target remembers for me.
.PHONY: build serve lint
build: ## build the site
hugo --minify
serve: ## live preview on :1313
hugo server -D
lint: ## check everything
yamllint . && shellcheck scripts/*.sh
Yes, there are nicer task runners. Just (the command runner) is genuinely lovely and I use it where I can. But make is already installed on every box I touch, the tab-vs-space thing aside it has no surprises, and a colleague who's never seen the repo can run make and get somewhere. That's the bar. It doesn't have to be clever, it has to be there when I've forgotten everything.