Module
Module 3 of 6Lesson 2 of 2~14 min

When time costs money: cost of delay, CD3 and WSJF

How to estimate what each month of waiting costs on a piece of work, and turn that into a sequence you can defend. This reasoning helps you weigh a pressing project against a more ambitious one, talk about lost value with finance and avoid missing an imposed deadline.

Take this lesson: your first course is freeSee the full syllabus

Lesson objective

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to estimate the cost of delay of several streams of work and its urgency profile, order them with CD3 or WSJF, and spot the fixed deadlines these calculations do not show.

Topics covered

  • cost of delay
  • CD3
  • WSJF
  • urgency profile
  • value-based prioritization

Where it fits

Prioritize with method

Out of all the possible bets, which ones come first, and with which method?

Lessons in this module

  1. One method per question: RICE, ICE, Kano, opportunity score
  2. When time costs money: cost of delay, CD3 and WSJF (this lesson)

What you will learn in the course

This lesson is part of the course Prioritize and build an outcome-based roadmap

  • Tell outputs, product outcomes and business outcomes apart, and phrase a team's goal as a measurable change in behavior it can influence.
  • Write useful OKRs (a qualitative objective, measurable key results, guardrails) and spot their common failure modes.
  • Choose and apply a prioritization method suited to the question at hand (RICE, ICE, Kano, opportunity scoring, cost of delay, WSJF), taking its limits into account.
  • Handle requests from sales, support and leadership starting from the problem behind them, and say no or not now with reasons.
  • Build a Now, Next, Later or theme-based roadmap tied to measurable outcomes, with external commitments shown separately.
  • Communicate uncertainty and dates according to horizon and audience, and review the roadmap on a written rhythm and set of triggers.
  • Use AI to synthesize roadmap inputs (feedback, requests, data) while keeping evidence traceable and the decision human.

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