Delta CX Decision Matrix
Delta CX Decision Matrix
It’s easy to say that many decisions about our products, services, and experiences are reversible. The dimension that then enters is: at what cost? What would it cost to have to change something in every hotel room? To undo an app feature everybody hated and redo it?
Therefore, considering these and other factors, the Delta CX Decision Matrix uses the following factors to judge who should do the work, when it should be done, and possibly how. You could say the need for a decision has SNUC up on you.
Strategy or Goal Achievement (S)
Does this work item or decision achieve stated goals or play strongly into our strategy? Rate this from 0 to 5 where 5 indicates that this achieves a goal or is highly relevant to our strategy. If this is someone’s ego or pet project and has absolutely nothing to do with strategy or goals, please give this a 0.
Number of People Affected (N)
Our decisions can be weighted by how many of our potential or current customers this might affect. Rate this from 0 to 5 where 5 indicates this affects 100% of customers. Nothing affects zero customers, but if it affects very few and is an extreme edge case, you can give this a 0.
Urgency or Severity (U)
How time-sensitive is this challenge or decision? How much are customers impacted? Is this mission critical or “life or death”? Rate this from 0 to 5 with 5 being the most urgent or severe. We would only give something a score of 0 if it wouldn’t matter if you took care of this now or in 5 years.
Cost to Reverse (C)
Most decisions are reversible with enough time and money. Rate this from 0 to 5 with 5 being the most expensive and time consuming to change or reverse. If something is inexpensively and easily reversible, you could give this a 0 or 1.
The cost to reverse is directly related to calculating risk. As an example, a well-known company has a smart light bulb without a factory reset button. If you need to reset it, there is a wild pattern of turning it on and off for a certain number of seconds for each on and each off.
What will it cost our company to decide later that our smart light bulb should have been produced with a simple reset button? What is the risk in having smart bulbs that the public bought that can’t be retrofitted with a reset button but must still be supported?
Due to the importance of this dimension, we are giving Cost to Reverse extra weight. Double this score when adding up your final score.
We then end up with a score. The lowest possible score is 0, which means this is unrelated to our goals, affects nearly zero customers, not on fire, and is easy to undo later. The highest possible score is 25, meaning it’s highly tied to our goals and strategy, affects all of our customers, it’s urgently on fire, and it would be wildly expensive or time-consuming to change later.
If the score is 10 or under, this is probably a stakeholder pet project: low importance, little to do with our goals, and doesn’t really affect many customers. The potential work items could be eliminated, rethought, evolved, or given to juniors to play with (with seniors as mentors). This would put this work item more in the “playing with a low priority idea” realm versus something urgent and important for customers.
Anything with a Decision Matrix score of 11 or higher should be given to our pros and experts, our action heroes, to take care of mission-critical work and decisions. What company gives something that is mission-critical to non-experts?