Tag: Prioritisation

CD3 and Cost of Delay puzzles

Johanna Rothman sent us through some common puzzles about Cost of Delay and CD3. Posting our thoughts here, in case others have similar questions or suggestions… “Who estimates the Value part of Cost of Delay?” In most organisations it tends to be the Product Owners or Product Managers who facilitate estimating the Cost of Delay. We see them more…
CD3 and proportionality to Outcomes

Here’s an interesting question: “I have been busy trying to figure out Cost of Delay but I’m stuck on a certain question — hopefully you can enlighten me. An example: Let’s say I have an ice cream stand that is currently at capacity, selling 10 ice-creams per week. I have two options to boost capacity: Option…
How to Find Gun Owners Fast

This is a wonderful piece by Jeanne Marie Laskas, writing for GQ magazine. It’s about a strange little federal agency in the US that runs traces on guns that are associated with a crime, trying to figure out who bought it. It’s long, but well worth reading in it’s entirety. There’s a few parts worth highlighting and looking into a…
Comparing Cost of Delay approaches

There are many different ways to approach Cost of Delay. It ranges from very simple categorisation or qualitative assessments, to more rigorous quantification of Cost of Delay. None of these is inherently “wrong”. (Rarely are things as black and white as that.) That does not mean they are equal, however. Some approaches to Cost of Delay are a lot more…
Fund the teams, not the project

One of the first articles I published highlights the problems created by doing funding and approval in large batches. Unfortunately, this is the status quo in most organisations and a lot of the malaise we see in I.T. is difficult to improve because of this. Addressing this requires a viable alternative though. It’s not enough to just point…
Managing Queues in Product Development

“Blindness to queues” is one of the cardinal sins of product development. Why? Well, here is a typical value stream map for a feature being delivered by a software team. Notice all the waiting? Not laziness: lots of Work-In-Process; Demand > Supply The reason for all the waiting is not that anyone is sitting around staring out the window…
SAFe and Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF)

In 2012, when Dean Leffingwell launched the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) it was obvious the impact that Don Reinertsen’s teachings had on elements of the design. In particular, SAFe specifies Don’s recommended method for scheduling: Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF). Whatever you think of the rest of SAFe, it really should be commended for encouraging organisations further along in…
WSJF – Weighted Shortest Job First

What is WSJF? Weighted Shortest Job First is a scheduling algorithm (or if you prefer, prioritisation method) that maximises the amount of whatever it is you choose to “weight” by in a given time period through a constrained resource. Where did WSJF come from? Back in the 1970’s, when computing resources were both extremely expensive and…
Innovation and cannibalization

How should we treat cannibalization when considering value and urgency? I have been asked this a number of times, usually in the context of quantifying the Cost of Delay. The issue at hand is whether you should take into account the likelihood that a new product or feature might “eat” the profits currently enjoyed in some other…
#MIXIT14 – Prioritising ideas using Cost of Delay

Özlem Yüce is coming to Lyon, France to speak at MIXIT14! How can we survive in a world where stakeholders want it all – and they want it yesterday? Are you tired of conflicting priorities and mechanisms that do not give your clear focus? Then this session is for you! At the end of Özlem’s…
#LKNA14

We’re coming to San Francisco! Looking forward to hearing some fantastic speakers talk about “Modern Management Methods” and share a few stories and thoughts of our own, at the Lean Kanban North America 2014 conference. We’ve got a couple of slots: The first will be a talk on Tuesday May 6, 2014 3:30pm – 4:10pm about…
The problem with projects

If you consider the economic value and urgency for each of the requirements for your software development project, you will likely find that it is not evenly distributed. It’s not four levels of value (like MoSCoW might suggest). It’s also not linear (like your relatively prioritised backlog might suggest). It probably looks something like this……
Black Swan Farming using Cost of Delay

Discover, nurture and speed up the delivery of value Improving prioritization has become a tired concept in most IT departments, and yet it has the potential to change the conversation from one of cutting cost, to delivering valuable solutions as quick as the business needs it. This paper examines how Maersk Line applied an economic…
Eurovision: prioritisation by politics

Two very good friends of mine are a bit special. Despite their intelligence and normally being trustworthy and of excellent judgement, for some inexplicable reason they absolutely love Eurovision. I just don’t get it. To me Eurovision seems a somewhat amusing but mostly irrelevant sideshow, with very little going for it in terms of the…
Urgency, duration and CD3 prioritisation

Interesting question from the resident DJ Rough: Urgent Optimism and how it can drive behaviour: gamification.co/2013/02/14/how… So, is Cost Of Delay entering into gamification? /cc @joshuajames — Dan Rough (@danrough) April 3, 2013 The article he’s pointing to talks about how we are motivated by the opportunity to finish small or urgent tasks. Here’s a snip…
Value: a framework for thinking

How might we think about the potential value of the products and services we could develop? Is there some way of structuring our thoughts so as to more quickly surface the potential value? I want to explain a bit about the background and development of a framework that attempts to do just that. This framework…
How to make billions of dollars from spare bits

< div>Happy 20th Birthday, SMS. Wow, haven’t you grown?! Sure, you’re still only 160 characters long, but none of us would have guessed 20 years ago how much a part of our lives you would become – the most widely used data application in the world with 3.6 billion active users. By utilising a bit of