# How SRE Teams Use Cost of Delay to Prioritize Reliability Work

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-site-reliability-podcast-with-fexingo-sre-uptime-and-production-engineering-7871923/how-sre-teams-use-cost-of-delay-to-prioritize-reliability-work
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-site-reliability-podcast-with-fexingo-sre-uptime-and-production-engineering-7871923/how-sre-teams-use-cost-of-delay-to-prioritize-reliability-work.md
Podcast: [The Site Reliability Podcast with Fexingo: SRE, Uptime, and Production Engineering](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-site-reliability-podcast-with-fexingo-sre-uptime-and-production-engineering-7871923)
Published: 2026-06-30T10:18:15+00:00
Episode link: https://audio.fexingo.com/business/the-site-reliability-podcast/episode-0082.mp3
Audio file: https://audio.fexingo.com/business/the-site-reliability-podcast/episode-0082.mp3
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Duration seconds: 768

## Resource

Episode 82 of The Site Reliability Podcast examines how cost of delay — a concept borrowed from product development — helps SRE teams decide which reliability projects to tackle first. Lucas and Luna walk through a real example from a mid-sized fintech company that used cost of delay to justify migrating from a legacy database to a distributed SQL solution. The episode explains how to calculate cost of delay per unit of time, how to weigh it against implementation effort, and why this framework prevents teams from wasting weeks on marginal improvements while ignoring critical risks. The hosts also discuss common pitfalls, like treating all outages as equal in cost, and how to adjust the model for incidents that erode trust rather than just revenue. By the end, listeners will have a concrete method they can adapt for their own SLO-based prioritization decisions. #CostOfDelay #SRE #SiteReliabilityEngineering #Prioritization #Reliability #IncidentResponse #SLO #ServiceLevelObjectives #Fintech #DatabaseMigration #DistributedSQL #RiskManagement #ProductManagement #TechOps #ProductionEngineering #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast #Technology Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo

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