Cost of DelayThe economic value lost for every week a piece of work sits unshipped — the price of waiting, in money per week. puts a price on time — the revenue you forgo, and the risk you carry, for every week a piece of work sits unshipped. Pin that number down and “we’ll get to it” turns into “this costs us €X a week” — the figure that drives WSJFWeighted Shortest Job First — a backlog-ordering rule: do the work with the highest cost of delay per unit of effort first..
| Late by | It will have cost |
|---|---|
1week | €10k |
2weeks | €20k |
4weeks | €40k |
8weeks | €80k |
13weeks | €130k |
26weeks | €260k |
A steady cost of delay accumulates one week at a time — the whole case for shipping the urgent thing now rather than “soon”.
Dividing cost of delay by how long the job takes gives its WSJF score (Reinertsen’s CD3Cost of Delay Divided by Duration — the economic form of WSJF: the value-lost-per-week-of-effort you rank a backlog by.) — the economic priority you rank a backlog by. Higher means do it first. Rank a whole backlog in the WSJF trinket →