This is a short primmer to connect CoD ( Cost of Delay ), and WSJF together. WSJF is a great tool to prioritize items in your backlog. It outputs a number that can then be used to quickly sort the items as a good first round prioritization. You will still need to apply dependencies and any other hard deadline prioritization to your new list, but this gives you a great starting place.
The Mechanics:
WSJF = CoD / Job Size
Job Size = Relative Size of Effort or Duration.
Many people like to use days of duration, and some people like to use job size estimate, or the Epic/Story Size in some cases. Either way, as long as you are comparing apples to apples, or Stories to Stories, you should be ok. As mentioned in the post about CoD, everything is relative, because everything you are doing here for the estimation is purely your best guess. Now taking advantage and leveraging your team, PO’s, BO’s, domain experts will always increase your chances that those guesses will be really really good guesses, and should be used when time permits. The formula is simple, and will give you a number. The number is just a relative number to sort your jobs/Epics/Features/Stories by. Do not.. Do not, use the numbers for any other type of metric. A (10) does not mean that it is 100 times more important than a (0.1). It just mean that it is likely more beneficially for you to do the (10), before an (0.1) at the time that you analyzed these items.
The Take-Away:
I would even advise if items are kept in your backlog for more than a few sprints, or more than a sprint, you might want to do a quick reassessment or sanity check if you will. Next thing, would to double check or sort by any dependencies and you should be well on your way to a prioritized backlog!