Stop 03 · Requirements Analysis & DocumentationTopics · 7/10

Requirements Prioritization (MoSCoW)

In short

Every stakeholder says their feature is 'top priority'. There's never time for everything. MoSCoW gives you a simple shared language for deciding what goes in now and what waits.

A framework sorting requirements into Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won't have (this time) — helping teams focus on what's truly essential when scope, time, or budget is constrained.

The purple blob kneels by an open travel bag deciding between a charger, a jacket, a speaker and a guitar.

Think of it like this

Packing one bag for a trip

You have one bag for a hostel trip. ID card and charger: must have. A jacket: should have. A Bluetooth speaker: could have, if there's space. Your guitar: won't have, this time. Same items, clear decisions, no fights at the station.

Watch it happen

Sorting a food app's backlog with MoSCoW

UPI payment

Order tracking

Reorder

Dark mode

Chatbot

1/5Six requested features, one release, limited time. Each needs a category.

The big ideas

What you need to know

Must have

Without it the release is useless, illegal or unsafe. If you could launch without it, it's not a Must.

Should have

Important and painful to leave out, but there's a workaround for now.

Could have

Nice to have. The first things to drop if time runs short.

Won't have (this time)

Agreed to be out of this release. Writing it down stops it sneaking back in.

Save yourself the pain

Common mistakes

Oops

Letting 80% of items become Must have.

Do this instead

Keep Musts to a clear minimum. A common guide is roughly 60% or less of the effort, so there's room for surprises.

Oops

Prioritising alone and announcing the result.

Do this instead

Sort items with stakeholders in the room so they agree with the trade-offs and own them.

Your mission

MoSCoW your own backlog

~20 min

Quick check

The team can launch and take orders without order tracking, but customers will be annoyed. Where does tracking fit?

Go deeper

1Sort a list of 8-10 hypothetical requirements using MoSCoW.
2Learn why 'Must have' should be a genuinely small, non-negotiable list, not most of the items.
3Practice defending a prioritization decision against stakeholder pushback.