A Perfectionist at heart
In my earlier years I was a real perfectionist. I’m still the annoying one that always spots the typo. However, I have learnt that you need to get to a point where something is good enough, so you can deliver on time and get on with the rest of your To Do list/ life. Spending too long on striving for 100% perfection comes at a cost – risking not delivering on time, not delivering enough, or trying to deliver everything to that standard and feeling overwhelmed.
So, how do you decide what to focus your energy on and ensure you deliver the right things? Having a way to prioritise really helps.
Must have MoSCoW
I have found MoSCoW to be a really useful prioritisation technique. Here, you order your list of tasks/ requirements by sorting them into categories:
Must haves; Should haves; Could haves and Won’t haves = MoSCoW
And in the real world?
To bring this to life a bit, here are some examples from designing and building my new company website:
Must haves:
- Consistent look and feel – clean and clear
- Describes all services the company offers
- Previous projects and recommendations included
- Easy to use/ navigate
- Privacy notice
- Includes a picture of me, as the director
Should haves:
- All pages visible from home page
- Content structured so easy to read
- A new business photograph of me (deferred in the end due to delay with haircut dependency!)
- A Blog page
Could haves:
- Icons for each paragraph on About page – delivered
- A photo of me taken professionally – deferred
- First blog written and posted – deferred to now – hope you like it!
Won’t haves:
- New company logo designed
These could also be shown grouped by item, split into MoSCoW categories e.g.
Photographs
- Must have one of me on the website
- Should have a new shot taken in business scenario
- Could have this done professionally
- Won’t have a portfolio of different shots
MoSCoW for projects, programmes, portfolios and people
There are a number of different ways MoSCoW can be used, to different levels of detail and scale.
Usually associated with Agile product delivery, but why not have at go at using MoSCoW for prioritising your own To Do list, as well as projects, programmes and portfolios.
A recent LinkedIn survey showed that half of us feel stressed at work, with workload/work-life balance being the No. 1 cause. Being able to focus in on what you really need to be doing helps you feel more in control of your workload – that’s one reason why it’s important to prioritise.
For Agile projects
In Agile (DSDM) projects the work is “chunked up” into timeboxes (or sprints in Scrum) of 2-4 weeks. Each timebox must deliver a Minimum Usable Subset (the MUSt haves), so that means all requirements are reviewed at the start of the timebox and split into categories: Must haves, Should haves etc. – then everyone agrees what will be delivered by the end of that timebox.
During delivery the team is empowered to decide whether or not the Could haves are delivered (giving them some contingency) but any potential changes to Must haves or Should haves need to be discussed with the business owner. One of the great things about Agile is it keeps the business engaged, so the team can respond quickly to any changes to the business needs.
For programmes
Scheduling projects within the programme plan is an important task and prioritisation is key here. There is such a thing as Agile Programme Management and that proposes that MoSCoW prioritisation is applied to the benefits. The MoSCoW category is used to indicate the level of their criticality to the overall programme vision. You can then work backwards from the benefits to see which projects are delivering the Must have benefits, which the Should haves etc, and prioritise/ plan accordingly.
Thinking about empowering the team, you could also use the MoSCoW category to hang the escalation levels on. So, to prevent a delay to the overall programme end date, a project delivering only a “Could have” benefit may be cancelled by the Programme Manager/Project Manager and/or relevant Business Change Manager (?) but any changes to a “Must have” project would need to be referred to the Programme Board or Senior Responsible Owner.
The MoSCoW category could also be linked to the risk management strategy.
Of course, understanding dependencies between projects is vital and you wouldn’t want a Must have project to be dependent on a Could have project, in case it didn’t happen. Dependencies would therefore need to be taken into consideration.
For portfolios
Being able to meaningfully prioritise projects and programmes within a portfolio is always a challenge. Various criteria can be used, often giving an overall score or rating to rank the components within the portfolio.
In the same way a set of criteria could be agreed for each MoSCoW category, allowing each initiative to be assigned a category. The portfolio could then be split into Must Haves, Should haves, Could haves and Won’t haves.
For example, the Must haves would include criteria such as “needed to comply with Health and Safety, or Regulatory requirements” (a.k.a. Just Do Its).
The portfolio would need to be reviewed regularly against the MoSCoW criteria to ensure any changes in the internal or external environment or to strategic priorities were considered and taken into account. The Won’t haves should be included in the review as they may become Could haves or even Must haves at some point, as time moves on.
And finally…
I appreciate there is a lot more detail to be had on MoSCoW (and of course there are other prioritisation techniques) but hope this has been a useful starter for ten, or reminder if you haven’t used it for a while.
I’d be interested to know if anyone has used it for programmes and portfolios. You can contact me through my LinkedIn profile or use the contact form on this website.
To find out more about MoSCoW, the Agile Business Consortium has a useful web page – moscow agile definition
I hope at least some of the content in this blog has been helpful or has sparked some ideas with you.
And finally, if you want to see how my company website turned out – do take a look at the rest of the site!