From Must-Haves to Won't-Haves: The MoSCoW Method for Achieving Your Goals

The MoSCoW method is a prioritisation framework commonly used in project management and goal setting. It is often used in product development to prioritise product features, but it can be applied in everyday life to cast a critical eye over the items on our to-do lists and to help us prioritise them according to our time and other resources available. Software development expert Dai Clegg created the MoSCoW method while working at Oracle.

The acronym MoSCoW stands for:

• Must-haves
• Should-haves
• Could-haves
• Won't-haves

1. Must-haves:

These are the non-negotiable, essential elements or goals that must be achieved for the project to be considered successful. They are critical to the project's core purpose and are typically high-priority items.

2. Should-haves:

These are important elements or goals that are not as critical as must-haves but are still significant for project success. They contribute to the overall value of the project and should be included if possible.

3. Could-haves:

These are desirable elements or goals that would enhance the project but are not essential. They are optional and can be considered if time and resources allow. If certain could-haves cannot be accommodated, it won't impact the project's core success.

4. Won't-haves:

These are elements or goals that are explicitly deemed unnecessary or inappropriate for the project. They are deliberately excluded from the scope, and their inclusion is not considered in the project's planning or execution.

The MOSCOW method is often used during project planning sessions to facilitate discussions among team members about the priorities and trade-offs associated with different project elements. It helps to align the team's understanding of what is crucial for project success and what can be considered secondary or optional.

When applied to personal goal setting, the MoSCoW method can also be a valuable tool for individuals to prioritise their objectives and tasks based on their importance and impact. While the Eisenhower Matrix (or the urgent-important Matrix) work well to categorise your general to-do list, the MoSCoW method comes in handy when you are working on the to-do’s related to a specific project or goal.

Here’s how to go about it:

You identified that a specific goal is important. Let’s say you want to write a book. Your goal is to submit the completed manuscript to the publishers in 10 months’ time. Your next step is to break the task down into smaller manageable tasks, such as

• Create a draft table of contents
• Create a title page
• Draw a diagram showing how all chapters fit together
• Draw a diagram for each chapter
• Create a summary of the content for the back page
• Craft an “About the author” section
• Record videos explaining all important concepts for online materials

And so on….

If you critically look at this list and you start working on it without considering what is important, you may end up having completed a lot of the “won’t haves” without getting to the “must haves” and “should haves”.

Let’s see how we can use the MoSCoW method to categorise tasks related to writing a book. If you had all the resources in the world, in other words, you could work on this project full time, but now you need to juggle all the other projects on your plate, and you have a 10 month time limit:

• Create a draft table of contents (must-have)
• Create a title page (must-have)
• Draw a diagram showing how all chapters fit together (should-have)
• Draw a diagram for each chapter (could-have)
• Create a summary of the content for the back page (must-have)
• Craft an “About the author” section (must-have)
• Record videos explaining all important concepts for online materials (won’t-have)

Image by https://zeda.io/blog/what-is-moscow-prioritisation-how-to-use-it 

Whether you are writing a book or a postgraduate research dissertation or redoing the interior of your living room, you can use the MoSCoW method on any of your projects or goals. By categorising your tasks into must-haves, should-haves, could-haves, and won't-haves, you can focus your efforts and precious resources (of which time is the major one) on what truly matters and allocate resources more effectively.

Find this and similar content on the Productivity Top Tips playlist on the Research Masterminds Youtube channel. 

Cover image by cottonbro studio