(2018-08-26) Cutler 4 Prioritization Lessonsusing Cost Of Delay And Cd3

John Cutler: 4 Prioritization (Prioritize) Lessons (using Cost of Delay and CD3) Cost of Delay divided by the expected number of periods until completion.... Lesson #1: For the “most valuable stuff”, duration probably doesn’t matter as much as you think. Your focus should be on trying to incrementally exploit the opportunity. Don’t waste time prematurely converging on a design/plan for the purpose of providing a more accurate estimate. Experiment quickly to “prove out” that estimate of High Value.

Lesson #2: “Small stuff” with tighter confidence around duration can be very competitive in terms of prioritization. Whenever possible, bite off undeniably small slices of work. This is the work that jumps out as “low-hanging fruit”…we are confident about the value and the scope/duration.

Combining Lesson #1 and Lesson #2, we get… Lesson #3: The perfect storm is “the most valuable stuff” with a high confidence of being able to deliver value incrementally. The big honking $10,00,000 12-monther becomes 12x$1,000,0000 1-monthers. One month efforts buy us flexibility and don’t lock us in. Now we’re talking…

I bet you’re saying: But if we COULD know durations perfectly, then we could optimize even further! We could sequence the work better. So why not try? Lesson #4: Correct (in theory). But not just for durations…you’d need to do the same thing for value as well. And at a certain point you’d need to step back and see if that extra work estimating and planning was creating extra value, or whether it was negatively impacting decision quality and design/solution quality (which happens frequently).