Q 450. When many elements are to be automated, prioritization becomes a key factor. Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) provides a method to prioritize features or elements to be taken up earlier. Explain how WSJF compares with some other prioritization methods.

 

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Weighted Shortest Job First Prioritization Framework

The WSJF framework is used to maximize ROI. It needs clear objectives before starting since the Return on Investment is linked to the priority assigned to a task. It predicts the value that the project will deliver before undertaking it. It is suitable to prioritize a very large range of features such as marketing, content marketing, bugs, type of product, business/technical risks, value to customers, etc. In simple mathematical terms, WSJF can be defined as the Cost of Delay divided by the Duration.

The components of Cost of Delay as determined by the developer of the framework (SAFe) are:-

·       User/Business Value

·       Time Criticality

·       Risk reduction/opportunity enablement

User/Business Value. Rank the tasks by relative importance to users and their potential impact on revenue. Questions asked at this stage are, what is the value to the business, what is the impact to revenue, what is the relative value to the end-user, and how important is it to the user, what are the negative impacts caused by delay, what are the users preference to this solution over others? The ranking was done by SAFe in a Fibonacci series of 1,2,3,5,8,13…

Time Criticality. Ranks the tasks by urgency. Estimate the decay in value over time or the number of customers lost over time. Questions asked are, is there a fixed deadline, will the value decay over time, will users wait, will users move to another solution, how urgent is it for the business or product? The measurement was done by SAFe in a Fibonacci series of 1,2,3,5,8,13…

Risk Reduction/Opportunity Enablement. Looks at long-term benefits against revenue, further improvements that will increase the number of potential customers. Helps to analyze legal/technical risks early in the project. Questions asked are, will this increase future business opportunities, is it important to eliminate future risks, is the risk of future delivery reduced, will the information received give value? The measurement was done by SAFe in a Fibonacci series of 1,2,3,5,8,13…

Duration/Size of Job. Duration ranks the job by the complexity of realization. The greater the complexity, the greater is the measurement. This would include factors such as costs of manhours, etc. Duration is also called feature points, story points, relative size, or effort. Since it is in the denominator, a smaller number is better. Questions asked are what are the dependencies that add risks and increase the time, how big or complex is the implementation, what will be the time to implement? The measurement was done by SAFe in a Fibonacci series of 1,2,3,5,8,13…

 

Drawbacks

All criteria are treated equally. What if you want to give a greater weightage to business value? You will have to add weights to the criteria.

It is based on relativity.

It is difficult to measure duration and other criteria.

Mitigation Consistency. Use the same score scale for all tasks to ensure consistency

Expert Opinion. Experts (developers) will be more accurate in the estimation of development time. Managers will be more accurate in estimating business value. Collaboration between managers and experts needs to be done for more accurate estimation.

Common Sense. Prioritization techniques help you to decide and not decide for you. Various other intangible factors need to be taken into consideration.

Use Cases. It is commonly used to maximize economic benefits in business problems. Use cases are to prioritize projects, features, ideas, hypotheses, and user stories.

 

RICE Scoring – Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort

The Rice scoring system is a prioritization framework that uses four factors viz, Reach Impact, Confidence and Effort to arrive at a decision. Being a quantitative prioritization technique, it relies more on data and removes the subjective and feeling aspects of decision-making.

Further details of Rice and details of the Kano Model (Delighter, Satisfactory, Neutral, Dis-satisfied), MoSCoW Method: (Must have, Should have, Could have, Will have), Product Tree, Benefit Vs Effort can be read from the Benchmark Six Sigma Forum link here

https://www.benchmarksixsigma.com/forum/topic/39068-rice-scoring/#comment-57229

Details of other Prioritization Matrix such as Eisenhower Matrix, 2x2 Matrix, Weighted Decision, VRDT, HEART, ICE, AARR, REAN are in the link in the references below. Some of them are explained below.

 

VRTD Framework (SEO Content Prioritization) [Volume, Relevance, Difficulty, Time]

There are four criteria for content prioritization i.e., volume, relevance, difficulty, and time

Volume. This is the potential traffic to the website. The number of people who search for a keyword. It can be scored as 0 for less than <250, 1 for volume between 250 and 500, 2 for volume between 500 and 1000), and 3 for above 1000. These numbers are based on the average volume in your domain.

Relevance. Traffic should be targeted and lead to conversions. How the keyword is relevant to the conversion to a customer. It can be scored as 0 for not relevant to 3 for highly relevant.

Difficulty. Difficult keywords are difficult to rank in an SEO. The difficult score can range from 0 for easy to 3 for very difficult.

Time is the time required to create content and can be scored as 0 for less than a day to 3 for above 10 days.

The Final Score for the keywords is calculated as below

Score = (Volume Score * 1) + (Relevance Score * 1) – (Difficulty*-1) – (Time Score*-1)

 

HEART Framework [Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success]

The HEART Framework along with the Goals-Signals-Metrics is developed by Google to measure and improve User Experience. The HEART Framework uses categories to define user-centered metrics.

 

ICE [Impact, Confidence, Ease of implementation] Prioritization

The ICE framework is used to prioritize projects, marketing initiatives, features, user stories, hypotheses, etc in a rapid manner with limited resources. It takes into account both the value of the product feature and the efforts required.

Score = (Impact + Confidence + Ease) / 3

Drawbacks. It is subjective. To circumvent the subjectiveness, the average score of the team can be taken.

 

AARRR Framework [Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue]

The AARRR framework is a metric to understand user behavior. It is used for goal setting and customer journey optimization.

Acquisition deals with the market channels used, Activation on the initial action that the user should take, Retention deals with repeat customers, Referral looks at the word-of-mouth aspect, and finally, Revenue deals with monetization.

Importance of AARRR. Analyzing and understanding users’ behavior helps in targeting metrics that make a difference in the bottom line. It keeps the team focussed on what is important.

 

REAN Framework [Reach, Engagement, Activation, and Nurture]

Used to map and analyze goal setting, marketing effectiveness, and develop KPIs.

Reach deals with brand awareness, Engage deals with audience interaction with the brand, Activation deals with conversion metrics, and Nurture deals with the effectiveness of the re-marketing efforts.

 

RACE Planning Framework [Reach, Act, Convert, and Engage.]

It is used for mapping and managing engagement activities. Reach deals with the volume of the website traffic, Act deals with conversions, time on site, likes, shares, etc., Convert deals with conversation rate optimization, retargeting, etc., and Engage deals with developing long term customers relationships.

References

https://www.benchmarksixsigma.com/forum/topic/39068-rice-scoring/#comment-57229

https://hello.ducalis.io/prioritization-frameworks/all-prioritization-templates

The most critical role of a product manager is the have a product with the essential features and/or functionalities ready when required.

While all the features and/or functionalities cannot be supplied at the same time, the need for undertaking a complex decision of prioritizing these features and/or functionalities present in a product backlog – one of another, becomes imperative. 

There are several prioritization models utilized by product and project teams. One of which is the Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) and the Cost of Delay (CoD), which is a prioritization model used to sequence jobs (eg. Features, Capabilities, and Epics) to minimize costs and produce maximum economic benefit at the end of a sprint. This is a thoroughly effective tool to simplify the prioritization initiatives and is part of the SAFe framework.

The basic assumption in this method is that any feature that is not delivered on time has a cost – the “Cost of Delay.” Poor prioritization, therefore, will lead to the multiplication of these costs.

The WSJF will be calculated for each feature to determine priority scores (higher score equals higher priority). This model utilizes the following four criteria for each feature/ functionality, on a nonlinear increasing scale, based on the Fibonacci sequence.

• User-Business Value of the feature (eg. very high for all key functions of the application).
• Criticality (or Urgency)
• Reduction of risks/ease in developing another
• Size of feature/task (effort and time to be provided by the development team for realization) *

* Generally evaluated by the development team

 

WSJF = (Cost of Delay) / (Size of Task)

Where, Cost of Delay (CoD) = User-Business Value + Time Criticality + Risk Reduction and/or Opportunity Enablement

 

To understand the deduction and implications of the formula a little deeper,

we have, Value = Increase Revenue + Protect Revenue + Reduce Cost + Avoid Cost

ð  Value = User-Business Value + Risk Reduction and/or Opportunity Enablement

Hence, the Cost of Delay can be understood as a function of Value and Time Criticality/ Urgency.

 

WSJF is particularly useful when the product owner has to decide between two similar features (in terms of value and development time), which feature should be developed first.

Source: https://www.scaledagileframework.com/wsjf/

 

A Comparative Assessment of WSFJ

and other Product Prioritization Frameworks

The method prioritizes smaller (Small Job Size) and high-Value tasks, which incentivizes users to break down jobs into smaller batches. WSJF is one of the most comprehensive and quantitative methods (minimizes personal biases, which may otherwise be present in a qualitative approach) of prioritization that allows for both mature and new products & MVPs.

 

The frameworks were categorized based on two key criteria viz.,

X-Axis: The degree to inputs to the method are highly qualitative or quantitative
Y-Axis: The level of end-user validation required on the method inputs*
viz. if the method includes evaluation of the “customer value” by the involvement of the customer or end-user to validate the score

Source: https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-choose-your-product-prioritization-framework-ff0320d63ebf

 

Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) is a prevailing model for ranking and prioritization. This is utilized in job sequencing based on features, capabilities and epics.
Scaled agile framework (SAFe) customs WSJF to prioritize backlogs.
WSJF is equally referred as CD3 (Cost of Delay Divided by Duration).

 

Calculation:
WSJF = CoD/Job Size
CoD – Cost of Delay – Economic impact of delay in project delivery
Job Size is the Job duration. 

 

Typical WSJF calculation that is used during PI Cycle is given below 

 

CoD consideration includes user business value, time criticality and risk reduction.

Below are some of the drilldowns of the respective considerations.

 

User business value:

• Relative value of the opportunity
• Opportunity rank in comparison to other
• Revenue generation or cost avoidance

Time Criticality:

• Opportunity value decline by time
• Target/fixed deadline
• Impact

Risk Reduction

• Opportunity reduces risk
• Create new opportunities 

Cost of Delay is a critical and key metric, while prioritizing and it has become essential to ask this fundamental question, “What will cost us the Most? Doing it Now or Delaying it Later?”

 

Specific to cost of delay, we can compare WSJF with other prioritization models like Short Job First and Most Valuable First. Below table summarized the comparison.  

 

 

However, possible comparison from a broader prioritization lookout, we can compare WSJF with MoSCoW, Kano, RICE, Eisenhower, Value vs Effort, Walking skeleton models.

 

 

Each model has its own Pros and Cons.

 

WSJF is a great tool for prioritization, it gives clear picture when to go for Low hanging Fruit Vs Projects with higher value. However, we don't have to rely upon WSJF each and every time as few features and deliverables are supposed to be delivered at the right time without brainstorming. 

Well responded by all - Johanan, Priyanka and Mohamed Asif. 

 

The winner is Mohamed Asif for the neat comparison tables that he has provided.