Kilofeet

MoSCoW: A Product Prioritization Methodology

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by

Chris Kluis
in

The MoSCoW prioritization methodology may be one of the simplest prioritization techniques which makes it extremely effective for bringing disparate parties together and determine a rough direction. 

Warning: Unlike some of the frameworks – you would not be able to start estimating a delivery schedule, releases, or even plan your work upon completing it. You will be able to go back and start prioritizing each of the category of features instead.

TLDR MoSCoW Summary

MoSCoW Prioritization Method

Note: for the exercise it makes sense to time window the horizon (month/quarter/year) so that ideas like AI TICKET HANDLING don’t attempt to slide in (presuming the company doesn’t have the talent/capability/skills to deliver that in the time horizon).

Must Have

I’m sure this is going to shock you. Item’s labeled Must Have are considered critical to the product. 🤯

  • Non-negotiables
  • Critical to success
  • No shortcuts

Must Haves should account for 45-65% of your planned capacity for the time horizon. 

Should Have

🤯 Should Have items are items that the team thinks are important:

  • Important, but not vital
  • Add significant value
  • Could slide to a future release
  • May have a work around

Must Haves & Should Haves should account for between 70-80% of your planned capacity for the time horizon.

Could Have

🤯 Could Have items are items the team has considered potential wins to include if they Must Have & Could Haveitems are completed.

  • Nice to have
  • Smaller value/impact
  • Will not hinder product without it

Could Haves are essentially the contingency items you can deliver after delivering the Must Haves & Could Haves.

Won’t Have

🤯 Won’t Have items are items that are considered out-of-scope or undesirable for this time horizon.

  • Don’t drive value
  • Larger than ability to deliver
  • Unable to deliver

Won’t Variant: There is a variant that changes Won’t to Wish. In this model, it’s unlikely that the Wish items will be delivered, but it separates the desired items from the discarded items. You can add an extra bucket for Discarded items in this variant. 

Pros & Cons of MoSCoW

The primary benefit to MoSCoW is it’s simplicity. The primary drawback of using MoSCoW is it’s simplicity.

Pros of MoSCoW

The benefits of MoSCoW include:

  • Simple
  • Fast
  • Less-detailed – not worrying about the order and only the overall importance can be very freeing and remove a lot of political discussions during a planning session
  • Unscientific – there is very little to explain when using this methodology 

Cons of MoSCoW

Just like all simple prioritization methods there are a number of cons due to the simplicity:

  • Estimated size can be way off for fresh ideas during a planning session
  • Least mathy framework reviewed so far
  • Does not rank priority inside of each classification
  • Lack of scientific or “value” in decision making on classification
  • Ambiguity on priority
  • When/should the items in the Won’t Have classification be reviewed again
  • When/should the items in the Won’t Have classification be thrown out
  • Technical debt & infrastructural work isn’t properly accounted for
  • Dependencies are extremely hard to track & account for
  • No accounting for talent, skills, or capabilities the team has