A way of communicating value and urgency, CoD is a measure of the impact of time on valuable outcomes.
— Making Work Visible, Second Edition, Dominica Degrandis (as “Cost of Delay (COD)”)
Cost of delay
3 of our books define this term — and their definitions are worth reading side by side.
A concept that can be used instead of ROI to make and prioritize business investment decisions. There is a cost to not having a particular technology capability—both in cash costs and opportunity costs—and it varies with time. If we have to prioritize two projects, each of which will take six months, we can calculate the cost of delaying each project six months, and whichever has a higher cost should be done first.
— War and Peace and IT: Glossary, Mark Schwartz
cost of delay (a metric promoted by Donald Reinertsen in his book The Principles of Product Development Flow ) in not getting the capabilities into users’ hands.
— War and Peace and IT, in “1 - THE BUSINESS AND IT”, Mark Schwartz
See also weighted shortest job first · Budget model · Business value · Call option · Data asset · Economies of Scale
Filed under Metrics & Economics