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A couple jobs ago, all tickets had a "cost of delay" field that was usually required. At first it felt absurd & silly, but over time, the spirit of it grew on

A couple jobs ago, all tickets had a "cost of delay" field that was usually required. At first it felt absurd & silly, but over time, the spirit of it grew on me a lot & has stuck with me. Let the backlog grow! But have tools to see what actually matters in the backlog, to assess where to go next. And the Cost of Delay should really indicate what really must be moved on. (I've seen more complex attempts, with a Weighted Shortest Job First (instead of Cost of Delay) that sometimes helps. But conceptually it feels more abstract and more overhead than just asking, how bad is it to put this off?) Also, having different ticket types can help a lot. Teams can figure out what's high value, but sometimes your business should be focusing on defects. Sometimes it should be focusing on spikes. Sometimes it should be focusing on features. If everything is just a ticket, in the same pool, it's hard to assess & align.

therealpygon 1y ago
Your comment sparked an idea. Most ticket systems have what can become a somewhat useless “Priority” field which occasionally ends up meaning “above X or below X”. We try to select the things from every priority that seem either valuable at higher priorities or easy at lower priorities, but a lot of time can get wasted reviewing the same tickets to decide. I am thinking a second similar field of “Risk” would be a great play on this Cost of Delay concept without adding much complexity and might help with more meaningful sorting. Something may be a low priority but a high risk(maybe it isn’t important in itself, but might represent a slice of a bigger risk), or a high priority but a low risk (like something customers want, but in reality is just a nice to have and the product would be fine without it). I suspect “Risk” could be arbitrary or whatever it means to a business, as long as it is consistent. Definitely given something to consider. Thanks for sharing.

therealpygon 1y ago

Your comment sparked an idea. Most ticket systems have what can become a somewhat useless “Priority” field which occasionally ends up meaning “above X or below X”. We try to select the things from every priority that seem either valuable at higher priorities or easy at lower priorities, but a lot of time can get wasted reviewing the same tickets to decide. I am thinking a second similar field of “Risk” would be a great play on this Cost of Delay concept without adding much complexity and might help with more meaningful sorting. Something may be a low priority but a high risk(maybe it isn’t important in itself, but might represent a slice of a bigger risk), or a high priority but a low risk (like something customers want, but in reality is just a nice to have and the product would be fine without it). I suspect “Risk” could be arbitrary or whatever it means to a business, as long as it is consistent. Definitely given something to consider. Thanks for sharing.