Costs of Delays and Decisions

The Cost of Delay

The cost of delay can mean the loss or deferment of a benefit/value due to the delay and/or incursion of some sort of penalty.

Note that it may not always be linear as shown here, if you miss a finite window of opportunity, the cost may be far greater.

In an agile ways of working the awareness of this and a desire to reduce any 'cost of delay' is paramount. This is primarily driven by the desire to deliver value very frequently. This drive is not only fuelled by a desire to achieve the obvious business benefit of delivering value early, but also because delays within a processes or activity can negatively impact workers by causing increases context switching and reduced knowledge retention.

Lost Opportunity Cost

A lost opportunity cost is the cost of a missed opportunity. It is the opposite of the benefit that would have been gained had an action not taken, have actually been taken—the missed opportunity. This may be for many reasons including problems and delays or a deliberate decision to do something else.

This phrase is often used to explain the impacts of choosing to do one thing over another, especially when the choice resulted in a a greater cost or a lesser benefit.

The Risk of speedy decisions

There is an inverse scenario... making unnecessary decisions too soon. See Making Better Decisions and the 'Related pages' links at the foot of the page.

The Learning-Forgetting curve

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