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The charm of the MoSCoW method: How to make your project priorities clear at a glance?
In the fields of project management, business analysis and software development, the MoSCoW method is a widely used prioritization technique that aims to help stakeholders reach a consensus in order to clearly identify the priority of various requirements. The term itself comes from an acronym: M for Must have, S for Should have, C for Could have, and W for Won’t have. 't have). To facilitate pronunciation, a lowercase 'o' is added in the middle of the first letter.
The basic idea of the MoSCoW method is that even if all requirements are important, delivering the greatest business benefits in the first place is still the top priority for the success of the project. Therefore, prioritization will be the key to successfully delivering the project.This sequencing method was originally designed for rapid application development by Dai Clegg in 1994 and has been used more widely since 2002, especially in dynamic systems development methods.
Prioritization of requirements
In many cases, developers will ideally try to implement all must-haves, should-haves, and nice-to-haves, but if delivery time is at stake, priority will be given to should-haves and nice-to-haves. The most definitive of these categories is the “must have” items; if any one of them is not included, the project will be considered a failure.
“The must-have requirements are critical to the current delivery timeframe and the absence of any one of them could result in project failure.”
This approach not only improves communication efficiency, but also helps customers understand the impact of setting priorities. During the project, each requirement is marked according to its importance. The meanings of these marks are:
- Must have: Critical to the current delivery.
- Should have: While important, not essential for current delivery.
- Optional: Can improve user experience, but is not necessary.
- Not at this time: Considered the lowest priority and will not be considered for delivery within the current timeframe.
MoSCoW Method in New Product Development
During new product development, especially when teams are following agile software development methodologies, there is always a chance that resources will exceed capacity, so prioritizing requirements becomes a top priority. At this point, the team can use the MoSCoW method to roughly screen which functions are must-haves, should-haves, etc., and ultimately form the framework of a minimum viable product (MVP).
After selecting the MVP, if the team is still facing too much workload, they can further use the MoSCoW method to clarify which features are must-haves and which are should-haves in order to effectively manage the development progress and resources. If resources are sufficient, the team may also consider incorporating possible projects.
Criticisms of the MoSCoW approach"In practical application, the MoSCoW method helps the team clarify ideas, speed up the process, and achieve successful project delivery."
Although the MoSCoW method is widely used, it still has some criticisms. One of them is that it does not effectively address the ranking problem of multiple requirements within the same priority level. In addition, there is a lack of reasonable explanation for the ranking of various needs, especially when determining what is necessary and what should be done, there is a lack of clear standards. Especially for the "will not have" category, the outside world is often confused about the time range of its definition, for example, whether it refers to the current version or a future version.
The trend of focusing on new feature development may lead to the neglect of technical improvements, which is also a concern of some experts.
Other Methods
In addition to the MoSCoW method, there are various other product prioritization methods for reference, including the Kano model, which can provide more ideas and options for scheduling different needs.
In a rapidly changing product development environment, how to keep project priorities clear and specific has become an important issue that every project team needs to think about?
