What does each item carry?#
The judgment needed, who owns it, the risk if wrong, the evidence and its gaps, the options, and the cost of continuing to wait. The gaps matter: a decision taken on evidence that only looks complete is worse than one taken knowingly under uncertainty. An approval inbox offers a button and leaves the reviewer to rebuild the context, which is how approval workflows become rubber stamps.
Why does the cost of waiting matter?#
The cost of waiting turns a list into a priority order. Without it, every item looks equally urgent and the queue is worked in arrival order, which is almost never the right one. Don Reinertsen's work on product development flow names queues as the root cause of most economic waste in product development, and cost of delay puts a price on them.
A decision queue that stays above its owner's attention budget is a design defect, and a fast route to decision fatigue.