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FeatureFactory
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WSJF Calculator

Weighted Shortest Job First - rank your backlog by Cost of Delay over job size and let the economics pick what ships next.

Your backlog

Editable estimates on a relative (Fibonacci) scale. WSJF = (Value + Time Criticality + Risk) / Job Size.

Cost of Delay: 26· WSJF: 8.67
Cost of Delay: 19· WSJF: 1.46
Cost of Delay: 18· WSJF: 2.25
Cost of Delay: 5· WSJF: 1

Ranked by WSJF

Do this first
Fix checkout timeout has the highest WSJF at 8.67 - the most Cost of Delay avoided per unit of effort.
  • 1.Fix checkout timeoutCoD 26 / size 38.67
  • 2.SSO / SAML loginCoD 18 / size 82.25
  • 3.Team dashboardCoD 19 / size 131.46
  • 4.Dark modeCoD 5 / size 51
User / Business Value

How much users or the business want this outcome. The bigger the relative pull, the higher the number.

Time Criticality

Does the value decay if you wait? Deadlines, seasonality and competitors landing first all push this up.

Risk Reduction / Opportunity

Does it de-risk future work or unlock new options - like removing a blocker or enabling a whole roadmap?

Job Size

Relative effort to deliver. It sits in the denominator, so smaller jobs of equal value rank higher.

How to prioritize with WSJF

WSJF - Weighted Shortest Job First - is the sequencing model at the heart of SAFe. Rather than debating which feature "feels" most important, you estimate each item's Cost of Delay (User/Business Value + Time Criticality + Risk Reduction/Opportunity) and divide it by Job Size. The result is a single comparable number: how much delay-cost you avoid per unit of effort. Rank descending and you have a defensible, economics-first backlog order.

Cost of Delay is the idea that does the real work here. Every week a valuable, time-sensitive item sits undone, you are paying for it in lost revenue, churned users or missed windows. Making that cost explicit - and then dividing by size - stops big projects from crowding out the small, urgent wins that keep flow high. Once WSJF picks your next item, turn it into a tight spec with our how to write a product plan guide and plan the work in FeatureFactory Plan.

A WSJF score is a hypothesis about value, not proof of it. The real test is what happens after you ship - did the value and urgency you assumed actually show up? Close that loop with outcome measurement, compare it against a value-focused model with the RICE score calculator, or explore the rest of our delivery tools.

Frequently asked questions

WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) is a SAFe prioritization model that sequences work by economic impact. You divide the Cost of Delay of each item by its Job Size: WSJF = (Value + Time Criticality + Risk Reduction/Opportunity) / Job Size. The highest score gets done first, because it delivers the most value per unit of effort.

Sequence it, ship it, then prove it worked

WSJF decides what to build next. FeatureFactory helps you plan and build it - then measures the real outcome, so your next Cost of Delay estimate is grounded in evidence instead of optimism.

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