Comments on: Defining the Last Responsible Moment

By: Agile, Team Work, Leadership » Blog Archive » Why the LRM is just theory?

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 21:30:16 +0000

[...] about the usefulness of the Last Responsible Moment (LRM) in the context of a complex project. The LRM is when the Cost of Delay overweights the Benefits of Delay. In other words, it’s often [...]

By: Last Responsible Moment—A Mindset | Lean Procrastination

Last Responsible Moment—A Mindset | Lean Procrastination — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 06:57:06 +0000

[...] of delay just outweighs the benefit of delay (though I value this economic thinking suggested by Karl Scotland). To me, last is a constant reminder that I might not yet have evaluated all options of [...]

By: Why I Don’t Attend Agile2011… « OlafLewitz

Why I Don’t Attend Agile2011… « OlafLewitz — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 08:44:44 +0000

[...] with the example, “when to submit to Agile2011?” (Karl Scotland elaborated on that topic here.) After short discussions with the people I intended to do my submissions for XP2011 together [...]

By: Quick Agile Links #12 – nemrac.com

Quick Agile Links #12 – nemrac.com — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 01:49:35 +0000

[...] flexibility down the road. Now Karl Scotland has written an elegant post that shows the what the Last Responsible Moment(s) are for Agile2010 conference [...]

By: allan kelly

allan kelly — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 08:27:38 +0000

Nice abstraction, there are a lot of context specific modifiers I would want to include.

Take a conference I know well, I used to be on the organizing committee: I can extend my own deadline by submitting a place holder before the deadline knowing that I know the committee well enough that they will check back with me during the review process
That doesn’t scale, if everyone does it the system breaks down. When I’m on the committee I hate people doing that becuase it makes my job more difficult (expensive).

Put it another way, I (submitter) can increase the value (to me) by extending my deadline, but I increase the cost to the organizers. Is there any value add? Or just value transfer?

Another conference I know: my submission experience suggests the organizers value JIT submissions highly and early submissions at zero. They have an open review process and when I submit early nobody looks at the proposal. Submit late, when everyone else is submitting (and reviewing) and it gets attention.

Bringing this back to LRM…

Its a bit like physics “friction free surface”, sooner or later you need to account for context, and as usual, the hard bit (the Devil or God, take your pick) is in the detail

By: Karl

Karl — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 08:50:44 +0000

Thanks Brian. There’s a difference between Benefit of Delay, and Benefit of Attending. I could be clearer on that difference and I think the final example needs some more work.

I’m not too worried about trying to quantify the costs and benefits precisely. Its more about the conversation and resulting shared mental model provided by the shapes of the graphs.

By: Karl

Karl — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 08:40:08 +0000

Ah. Yes, I see that the Cost of Delay is reduced much more due to sunk cost. Thanks. I still think that there is Benefit of Delay. Why submit early when you don’t have to submit at all?

I can’t actually make LWS this week. Shame you can’t make LSSC10. Next time though!

By: Brian Marick

Brian Marick — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 22:15:41 +0000

This is nice, really nice. Still, there’s a little bit of unit mixing in your description. I notice that in the beginning, your description of Benefit uses these words: “speaker benefits including conference registration, complimentary hotel nights.” Later, you use a considerably less specific “so important and valuable to say” to talk about the Benefits of acting late.

That’s one of the things I worry about when it comes to such cost/benefit analyses. That which is easily quantifiable (cost of hotel rooms) comes to dominate the qualitative (what you get out of speaking). In unsubtle hands, the qualitative gets completely ignored, leading to bad decisions.

What happens if different benefits and different costs are incommensurable, if not everything can be converted into, say, euros?

By: Paul Dolman-Darrall

Paul Dolman-Darrall — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 20:21:05 +0000

One for the pub on Thursday. However once the ticket has been purchased it should no longer be included in the decision.

Thus the cost of delay is losing the opportunity to have the work iterated, feedback and get a guaranteed spot, the ticket price is no longer a factor.

The benefit of delay is nothing, there is no benefit in delaying. He has already purchased the ticket.

The simplicity is good, but it leads the wrong choice in the final answer.

By: Karl

Karl — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 20:15:07 +0000

Hi Paul,

Not sure I understand your argument. I wasn’t consciously allowing sunk cost, although I was ignoring the “option cost” for simplicity.

Karl