The cost of delay due to multitasking is real. It’s invisible to most people, especially management. It’s not just the cost of time lost due to context switching; it’s the fact that projects don't get out on time, which hurts your maximum sales revenue. How do you calculate these costs of delay?

The cost of delay is the way to think about the revenue you can lose plus the cost of continued development. When you delay your release and don’t ship on time, you miss the revenue from the maximum sales times. Shipping on time isn't always easy, but it's easy to see why you need to.

Bonnie Bailey writes on how toilet paper problems, which are problems in which the effort required to resolve them are proportional to their current urgency, affect software development. When dealing with toilet paper problems, you're less likely to prepare for other potential problems.