“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing”
Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) is a prioritization model used to sequence projects to produce maximum economic benefit. WSJF is used to prioritize backlogs by calculating the relative Cost of Delay and job size (a proxy for the duration). A project is made up of features and by evaluating the most critical features of a project, we can prioritize the project and rank it alongside other projects.
WSJF = Cost of Delay / Job Duration (Job Size)
The three primary components that contribute to the Cost of Delay are:
User-business value – User Business Value is the value that this feature can give to the project. As compared to the other features, what special USP and revenue impact can this feature have on the overall project
Time criticality – Time Criticality indicates the importance of doing the project now. If a project is highly time critical, then our competition is considering it as well, and if we are not first to market, then the value that we can capture will be limited.
Risk reduction & opportunity enablement value – Risk reduction and opportunity enablement indicate that the project either positions the company to make follow-on projects or mitigates risk.
Cost of Delay = User Business Value + Time Criticality + Risk Red.-Opp. Enablement Value
Job duration can be difficult to determine, especially early on when we might not know who is going to do the work or the capacity allocation for the teams. Fortunately, we have a proxy available: job size. In systems with fixed resources, job size is a good proxy for the duration. (If I am the only one mowing my lawn, and the front yard is three times bigger than the backyard, it is going to take three times longer)