Every delivery has a timeline and requirements and most of the project’s timeline is fixed, so that the focus must be on the most important requirements, and to understand and prioritize those requirements MoSCoW technique/tool is used. It’s prioritization technique/tool utilized in management, project management, and software development to succeed in a standard understanding with stakeholders on the delivery requirement.
What is MoSCow?
The term MoSCoW stands for
M - Must have
S - Should have
C - Could have
W - Won't have
In simple term prioritization categories has value in getting customers to better understand the impact of setting a priority, compared to alternatives like High, Medium and Low.
All requirements are important, but they are prioritized based on the delivery which gives most business benefit. In the delivery of any project will initially try to deliver all the Must have, Should have, and Could have requirements. If the delivery timeline does not permit all these then Should and Could requirements will be the first to be removed.
Must Have:
These are the requirement which is critical and without any one of these requirements, the project delivery should be considered as a failure. MUST is itself stands for Minimum Usable Subset of requirement.
Must have can be defined by questioning “What happens if this requirement is not met? And if the answer is project cancel then there is no point in excluding this from the prioritization list of requirements and it’s considered as Must have requirement.
Should Have:
These are the requirements that are important but not vital for delivery in the current timeframe. Should have requirements are as important as Must have, but they are often not as time-critical.
Could Have:
These are the requirements that are nice to have, which means if these requirements are not there then there is no impact on delivery, but if it’s there then customer satisfaction is high. We can include when there is enough time and resources available for delivery.
Won’t have (this time):
These are the requirements that are least-critical or out of scope or lowest beneficial or not appropriate at the time. Won’t have requirements are not planned into the schedule for delivery, we can either dropped or reconsidered these requirements later.
Below is example of MoSCoW technique:
You are going to buy a new car with 7 seater to travel with family on the weekends. The car should have reverse parking sensor and camera and fuel type CNG. And Favorite color is Blue, so you want to have a Blue color body
It would be also nice to have 7 inch Display Screen and Bluetooth connectivity for your iPod. In addition, you are fond of having a reverse parking sensor and camera.
Let’s define prioritization:
M – a new car for traveling, with 7 seats.
S – reverse parking sensor and camera, fuel type CNG.
C – a Blue color body.
W – 7-inch Display and Bluetooth connectivity.