2-2: Cost of Delay & Prioritization
Stop relying on gut-feel. Use mathematical prioritization.
🎯 What You'll Learn
- ✓ Master WSJF pricing
- ✓ Calculate Cost of Delay
- ✓ Handle technical debt vs features
- ✓ Defend roadmaps to leadership
Lesson 1: The Cost of Delay (CoD)
If you ship a feature 3 months late that generates $50,000/mo, your Cost of Delay is $150,000. Prioritization isn't just about ROI, it's about minimizing the financial penalty of waiting.
The immediate revenue or retention saved.
How the value decays over time (e.g., missing a holiday launch).
Value gained by unblocking future work.
Calculate the Cost of Delay in pure dollars for your top 3 roadmap items.
Lesson 2: WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First)
WSJF = Cost of Delay / Job Size. A massive feature with high value might lose to a tiny feature with medium value because the tiny feature ships immediately and starts compounding returns.
Estimated engineering effort.
The definitive ranking metric.
Breaking large epics down into smaller ships to improve WSJF.
Take your current sprint backlog and recalculate the priority order strictly using WSJF.
Lesson 3: The 70/20/10 Allocation Matrix
Balancing feature development against technical debt and innovation. If you give engineering 0% for technical debt, velocity will inevitably grind to a halt.
70% allocation to roadmap items driving ARR.
20% allocation to refactoring and infrastructure.
10% allocation to high-risk, 10x potential experiments.
Audit your team's time allocation over the last quarter. Map it against the 70/20/10 matrix.
Continue Learning: Track 2 - Product Manager / CPO
2 more lessons with actionable playbooks, executive dashboards, and engineering architecture.
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Defensible Economics
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Module Syllabus
Lesson 1: Lesson 1: The Cost of Delay (CoD)
If you ship a feature 3 months late that generates $50,000/mo, your Cost of Delay is $150,000. Prioritization isn't just about ROI, it's about minimizing the financial penalty of waiting.
Lesson 2: Lesson 2: WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First)
WSJF = Cost of Delay / Job Size. A massive feature with high value might lose to a tiny feature with medium value because the tiny feature ships immediately and starts compounding returns.
Lesson 3: Lesson 3: The 70/20/10 Allocation Matrix
Balancing feature development against technical debt and innovation. If you give engineering 0% for technical debt, velocity will inevitably grind to a halt.
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Want to apply this to your organization with Cost of Delay & Prioritization?
Run a free diagnostic first. If the numbers concern you, book a session to build a remediation plan.
Richard Ewing: AI Economist & Capital Auditor