Calculate the cost of a priority mistake
If you want an estimate of the cost of making a bad prioritization decision, try this cute little calculator.
Is It My Fault You Can't Handle The Truth?
You can't handle it! In 2018 or 2019, I was introduced to the idea of hyper-rationality. I think it was under another name (to be given shortly) and as part of a presentation by George Dinwiddie on, of all things, estimation. It was a funny place to be introduced to ideas from psychology and family therapy, as well as organizational psychology and collaboration, but there it is. It is nice to be smart. It's extra nice to be right. It is wonderfully nice to be right, smart, rational, and helpful to others. Sometimes we put too much emphasis on being right and forget to be helpful. Hyper-rationality is a state of being excessively or inordinately rational. It is a belief in rational truth as an unassailable fortress, that being correct is all that matters. For instance, consider the sentiment that if I am right or I am telling the truth then you have no right to be offended or upset. It might feel right, but it sounds wrong. When people are acting hyper-ra...
Aren't you leaving out the opportinity cost there? Yeah, I spent X amount of salary by not implementing something people want, but I missed Y amount of revenue for 3 months while we built the wrong thing.
ReplyDeleteI didn't write it, I just found it.
ReplyDeleteIt is an interesting bit, though.
If you look at it one way it's not all that expensive and you can say "Hey, it's only 64K, in the grand scheme it's not all that bad." It's only a few weeks of time, maybe.
On the other hand you see that there is real money involved. it's not free.
As, as you say, if the team had completed a minimal marketable feature, you might be making more money by now instead of writing off a mistake.