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Cost of delay calculator
Every week a job waits, it costs you what it would have earned or saved. Type each job’s cost of delay and duration: see the cheapest order and what the order you had in mind costs.
Do Feature B first. The CD3 order costs $27,000 of delay instead of$69,000.
| Rule | Order | Delay cost |
|---|---|---|
| As typed | Feature A → Feature B → Feature C | $69,000 |
| CD3 (cost of delay ÷ duration) | Feature B → Feature C → Feature A | $27,000 |
How the cost of delay is calculated
Black Swan Farming defines it as “a way of communicating the impact of time on the outcomes we hope to achieve”: what you lose for each week a job is not done. Three numbers do the work:
- Cost of delay per week: revenue not earned, cost not saved or risk not removed while the job waits.
- CD3 = cost of delay per week ÷ duration in weeks. Highest first.
- Delay cost of an order = for each job, its cost of delay × the week it finishes, added up. A job keeps costing until it ships, including the weeks it is being built.
Why CD3 wins: with one team doing one job at a time, sorting by weight ÷ duration gives the smallest weighted sum of finish times. That is W. E. Smith’s rule from scheduling theory (1956). The calculator does not ask you to trust it: for up to 8 jobs it tries every order (8 jobs = 40,320 orders) and shows whether any beats CD3.
A worked example
Black Swan Farming’s three features, one team:
| Job | Cost of delay per week | Weeks | CD3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feature A | $1,000 | 5 | $200 |
| Feature B | $4,000 | 1 | $4,000 |
| Feature C | $5,000 | 2 | $2,500 |
Done in the order A, B, C, A finishes in week 5, B in week 6 and C in week 8: $1,000 × 5 + $4,000 × 6 + $5,000 × 8 = $69,000. In CD3 order B, C, A: $4,000 × 1 + $5,000 × 3 + $1,000 × 8 = $27,000. Same work, same team,$42,000 less lost: the 61% the original article reports.
Where the cost of delay per week comes from
Most teams never put a number on it, which is why the order is argued over instead of calculated. Estimate it from the value a job brings once live and how that value changes if it is late. Black Swan Farming describes urgency profiles: short-lived benefits where lateness cuts the peak (a seasonal launch), long-lived benefits with a first-mover effect, and the most common case, long-lived benefits whose peak does not move, such as automating a process. For that last kind, the weekly value is the cost of delay.
Rough numbers are enough. The order depends on ratios, so a team that agrees “B is worth about four times A per week” already has what it needs.
Cost of delay, WSJF and RICE
SAFe’s WSJF is the scoring version: backlogs are prioritised with “relative user and business value, time criticality, risk reduction and/or opportunity enablement, and job size”. It avoids money, which makes it easier to agree on and harder to act on. RICE scores reach, impact, confidence and effort. If you score, our RICE & WSJF calculator ranks a list both ways and shows where they disagree.
Putting the order into Jira
Jira keeps the order of a backlog in a field called Rank, not in Priority; ourJira backlog guide shows why a Highest item can still sit at the bottom. Priority Board shows a project as one column per priority: drag an item to set its priority and up or down to set its rank. It does not calculate cost of delay; use this page for the numbers and the board for the order.
Sources
- Black Swan Farming (Joshua Arnold): Cost of Delay, Cost of Delay Divided by Duration, Urgency Profiles.
- Scaled Agile Framework: Weighted Shortest Job First.
- W. E. Smith, “Various optimizers for single-stage production”, Naval Research Logistics Quarterly 3 (1956), 59–66.
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate the cost of delay?
Estimate what the job is worth per week once it is delivered (extra revenue, cost saved, risk removed) and how much of that you lose for each week it is late. That loss per week is its cost of delay. A job worth $4,000 a week that ships 3 weeks late costs $12,000.
What is CD3?
Cost of delay divided by duration. Divide each job’s cost of delay per week by the weeks it takes and do the highest first. When one team works on one job at a time, that order gives the lowest total delay cost: the calculator checks every possible order to show it (up to 8 jobs).
What is the difference between cost of delay and WSJF?
WSJF (weighted shortest job first) is the same idea with relative scores instead of money. SAFe builds the cost of delay from user and business value, time criticality, and risk reduction or opportunity enablement, then divides it by job size. Our RICE & WSJF calculator does the scoring version; this one works in money and weeks.
What if I cannot put a money value on a job?
Use the same unit for every job: points, a 1–10 scale or thousands of dollars. The order only depends on the ratios. What you lose is the total in money, which is the number that changes minds in a planning meeting.
Is my data sent anywhere?
No. The calculation runs in your browser, nothing is sent or stored, and the page works offline once it has loaded.