Cost of Delay

Calculate the business impact of delaying features to prioritize high-payoff work.

Context

You are deciding what to build next. Cost of Delay quantifies the cost of waiting. Your goal is to prioritize work with high impact per week spent.

Domain Context

• Cost of Delay = opportunity cost: Revenue lost, customer churn, competitive risk
• Delay impact: Some features become more valuable if delayed; others lose value
• Cadence: Fast shipping reduces total delay cost across portfolio
• Risk of delay: Competitive threats might close a window

Instructions

1. List opportunities
2. Estimate delay cost: What's the monthly revenue/retention impact if we wait?
3. Estimate effort: Weeks to ship
4. Calculate Cost of Delay / Effort: Higher is more urgent
5. Adjust for risk: Add premium for competitive/strategic risk
6. Prioritize: Order by Cost of Delay / Effort

Output Artifact

Cost of Delay analysis (1-2 pages):

• Opportunities with estimated delay costs
• Effort estimates
• Cost of Delay / Effort ratios
• Prioritized list with rationale
• Monthly revenue/churn impact if deprioritized

Anti-Patterns

• Confusing "important to me" with "high delay cost: Strategic features might have low CoD
• Not revisiting: Delay cost changes; prioritization must change too
• Ignoring waiting cost: Cumulative delay cost adds up fast across portfolio
• Assuming uniform delay: Each week of delay has different cost (early weeks > later weeks)

Further Reading

• Inspired (Marty Cagan) — prioritization
• The Lean Product Playbook (Dan Olsen) — opportunity assessment