How One CTO Uses Cost of Delay to Prioritize the Feature Queue

Tech Leadership with Fexingo: Engineering Managers, CTOs, and Technical Leadership Conversations · Jul 3, 2026 · 9m · transcript

In this episode of Tech Leadership with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore how a CTO at a mid-size SaaS company uses Cost of Delay to prioritize features. They break down the formula — value divided by duration — and walk through a real example where a login feature was deprioritized because its Cost of Delay was lower than a data export tool. They discuss how the CTO briefed product managers to estimate delay cost in dollar terms, and how the team used weighted shortest job first to sequence work. The conversation covers common pitfalls, like over-weighing urgency vs. value, and the importance…