Prioritization is the activity that organizes a set of items or work in order of importance relative to each other.

Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) is a priorisation model that takes into account what is named the Cost of the Delay (hereinafter CoD) and the Job Duration.

Apart from helping the teams to deliver the maximum value in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of effort, the other advantages of using WSJF are that:

• It prevents big jobs from blocking the development pipeline by giving preference to smaller features that are faster to implement. This further promotes the incremental and iterative approach to development.
• Supports taking an economic view by helping teams understand the economic impact of their decisions.
• It prevents sunk cost fallacy to ensure that the most meaningful job gets the funding they deserve.
• Supports the use of decision rules to decentralize the decision-making process.

The WSJF is the responsibility of the Epic Owner to gather, that is, the person that creates the Epic (being a portfolio epic or a feature)

The CoD is the sum total of three components Value to the business and/or the user, Time criticality and Risk Reduction, and/or Opportunity Enablement (RR|OE) value.

CoD = User-Business Value + Time Criticality + RR | OE

User-Business Value

What is the Value that the job provides to the business and/or the user is usually arrived at by evaluating (but not limited to) the following -

· What is the relative value to the customer or business?

· Why would a user prefer this job over another?

· What is the revenue impact on the business?

· Adverse effects (like a potential penalty) if it gets delayed.

Time criticality

Time criticality indicates the importance of doing the job right now and is usually arrived at by evaluating (but not limited to) the following –

· Is there a fixed need by date or deadline?

· How does the value of the job decay over time?

· Dependency on any milestones?

· What is the current effect on customer satisfaction, and will they move on to another solution?

Risk reduction and/or opportunity enablement (RR|OE)

RR-OE indicates the requirements capability to generate follow-on options or to either mitigate or better manage risks. RR|OE is usually arrived at by evaluating (but not limited to) the following –

· What additional benefits does this job do for the business?

· Will the job reduce the risk of current or future deliveries?

· Will the job enable new business opportunities?

Some Risk categories examples:

1. Compliance and Regulatory Requirements:

   • Implementing features that ensure compliance with new regulations can reduce the risk of legal penalties or fines.

2. Security Enhancements:

   • Developing security features to protect against data breaches can reduce the risk of financial loss and reputational damage.

3. Technical Debt Reduction:

   • Refactoring code or updating outdated systems can reduce the risk of system failures and improve maintainability.

4. Market Risk Mitigation:

   • Introducing features that align with market trends can reduce the risk of losing market share to competitors.

5. Operational Risk Reduction:

   • Automating manual processes can reduce the risk of human error and improve operational efficiency.

6. Customer Retention:

   • Enhancing user experience to reduce churn can mitigate the risk of losing customers to competitors.

7. Scalability Improvements:

   • Building scalable architecture can reduce the risk of performance issues as user demand grows.

Job Duration

To calculate WSJF, we now need to estimate the Job Duration, and this tends to be difficult, especially since we do not know the capacity allocation or who is going to work on it. So, we use job size, which is a good proxy for the duration to calculate WSJF