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WSJF

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19 views

WSJF

Uploaded by

konaje5863
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Waited Shortest Job First, or WSJF, is a model for prioritizing jobs based on the

economics
of product development flow.
You can use WSJF to prioritize jobs of any type.
In SAFE, we use it to prioritize epics, capabilities, and features as they work
their way through
the respective Kanban systems.
This video describes how to calculate relative WSJF across a backlog of features.
To calculate WSJF, we need to estimate the numerator, cost of delay, and the
denominator,
job duration.
SAFE uses three primary components that contribute to cost of delay.
User business value.
What's the relative value to the user or the business?
What's the revenue impact on our business?
Time criticality.
How does the user business value decay over time?
Is there a fixed deadline?
Will customers wait for us or move to another solution?
Risk reduction and opportunity enablement.
What else does this do for our business?
Does it reduce the risk of this or a future delivery?
Does it enable other business opportunities?
Job duration can be difficult to determine, especially early on when we might not
know
who will do the work or the capacity allocation that can be applied.
Fortunately, in systems with fairly fixed resources, job size is a good proxy for
the
duration, so we can use job size as the denominator.
This gives us the following formula for calculating WSJF.
Since we're in a continuous flow, we typically have lots of jobs to pick from.
That simplifies things even more because we don't have to estimate absolute
numbers.
Instead, we simply compare items relative to each other to calculate a relative
WSJF.
Consider these three potential features for enhancing an online bookstore.
Book reviewing, profile management, book rating.
We estimate each feature or row in the table relative to the other features for
each of
the three components of cost of delay.
Then, we repeat the process one last time to estimate relative job size.
As with story estimating, we use the modified Fibonacci sequence because it better
reflects
the range of uncertainty in estimates as the size gets bigger.
But note that in each column, we always start by identifying the smallest item and
giving
it a 1.
Then we score the others relative to that.
Considering first the value to the user and the business, we give the book
reviewing feature
a 1, as we suspect that only a subset of users will engage with this functionality.
The profile management feature is more valuable because it applies to all users and
saves
them from having to re-enter their details every time they want to make a purchase.
We give profile management a 5.
The book rating feature is easier to use compared to writing a review and helps
other users
looking for recommendations, but we think it's less important than profile
management
and give it a 3.
The next column is time criticality.
Neither the book reviewing nor the book rating feature is time critical, so we give
both
a 1.
Because profile management doesn't exist yet, there's already a negative impact on
customer satisfaction, so we give this feature a 5.
The final component of cost of delay is risk reduction and opportunity enablement.
Again, we scored book reviewing a 1, since we can't identify any real risk
reduction
or further opportunity enablement associated with this feature.
Because profile management reduces customer dissatisfaction risk, we score it a 5.
Book rating opens new opportunities with the ability to sort by the highest rated
books
and create best seller lists.
We also give this a 5.
Then we total these scores to arrive at the cost of delay score.
The next step is to consider the job size.
Book rating requires the least effort, so that receives a 1.
Book reviewing and profile management require significantly more effort, so we
assign those
a 3 and a 5 respectively.
Finally, we divide the cost of delay by the job size to calculate the WSJF.
The feature with the highest WSJF is the next most important job to do.
The results can be interesting and often not what people expected.
For example, while profile management had the highest cost of delay, book rating
had
a shorter duration and a higher WSJF value.
Simply put, delivering the book rating feature first maximizes the value delivered
to the
customer in the shortest time and provides the best overall economics.
So that's the next job to do.
For more information, please refer to the weighted shortest job first article on
scaledadgeoframework.com.

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