MoSCoW Matrix Template
Organize deliverables in a matrix to assess their significance to your team's projects.
About the MoSCoW Matrix Template
When you’re working on a project with a lot of deliverables, it can be difficult to track priorities. And as deadlines approach, sometimes priorities can shift, further complicating your workflow. How can you keep track of evolving priorities and still focus on a complex project?
What is the MoSCoW method?
The MoSCoW method is a powerful technique for tracking priorities, which are categorized and placed in a matrix model. Project managers, product developers, and business analysts use the matrix to align their teams when working through a set of project deliverables. Teams collaborate with stakeholders to analyze and rank the importance of deliverables with MoSCoW, making it easier to stay on track.
MoSCoW is an acronym for Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, and Won’t Have. These four priority categories make up the four segments in the matrix. “Must Have” items are necessary for delivery; “Should Have” items are important but not necessary; “Could Have” items are nice to have (they are not priorities, but your team can work on them if time and resources permit); and “Won’t Have” items do not fit into the scope of the current project. To use MoSCoW, you create four category segments showing your current priorities and their status (Complete, In Progress, or Not Yet Started).
When to use the MoSCoW method
The MoSCoW method is useful whenever you need to present business needs to an audience, assess priorities, and collaborate on impending deliverables with a group of stakeholders. By drawing and updating the matrix, you can get a snapshot of your priorities and their impact at each stage of a project. MoSCoW allows everyone on your team to easily grasp upcoming tasks and their impact on your timeline.
Create your own MoSCoW matrix
Making your own MoSCoW matrix is easy. Miro comes with the perfect canvas to create and share it. Get started by selecting the MoSCoW matrix template, then take the following steps to make one of your own.
Fill in your must-haves. The MoSCoW matrix is divided into four categories. The first is Must Haves, the items that are necessary for completion of your project. If you’re unsure whether a task is a Must-have, ask yourself the following questions: If you do not complete this task, will your product or service work as intended? Can you still deliver the product without this item? Does this task allow you to fulfill all legal requirements for your project? Will your product or service be safe without it? Will your customer suffer consequences if you fail to complete this task?
Fill in your should-haves. Next, move on to the items that are not necessary to complete your project but are still important for success. Remember, the items in this category are not vital, but you should try and incorporate them into your timeline anyway. If you’re unsure, ask yourself: Although it might be painful not to complete this task, could you still ship the product without it? Can you use a workaround to avoid this task?
Fill in your could-haves. Many teams colloquially refer to these items as “nice-to-haves.” While they might make the service run more smoothly or make your product look better, these tasks are not important. If you have the time or resources to complete them at the end, then you can do so. If not, you can plan to do them later. To fill out this part of the matrix, ask yourself the following questions: What are the benefits of these tasks? Do they outweigh the costs? How will these tasks impact our timeline? Can we still complete the project on time and within budget if we include these tasks?
Fill out your won’t-haves. These items are outside the scope of your current project. Maybe you don’t have the budget to complete them, or maybe they don’t fit into your timeline. If you’re not quite sure whether something is a Won’t Have, ask yourself: How does this item impact our budget? Does our team have the bandwidth to complete this task? Will this item have a tangible impact on our customers? No one likes to admit that they can’t complete something, but don’t think of Won’t Haves as failures; they’re projects for another day.
How do you use the MoSCow template?
The MoSCoW acronym (excluding the o's) is carved with the first letters of the priority categories it works with. These are Must-haves, Should-haves, Could-haves and Won't-haves. And that's how you can define which task falls into which category.
What are the benefits of using the MoSCow method?
The key benefits of the MoSCoW technique are that it's quick and easy to use. The technique is good for highlighting the priorities of projects that are in progress and for organizing efficient time management.
Get started with this template right now.
Meeting Organizer Template
Works best for:
Meetings, Workshops, Project Planning
When it comes to ideas generated during a meeting, you want quantity AND quality. So why choose? Our meeting organizer template will maximize your meeting’s chances of yielding lots of great ideas. It will give you a simple, efficient way to design any activity (including meetings and daily planning) and make sure remote teammates know just what the meeting aims to accomplish. And you can give your meeting organizer power by connecting Miro to your favorite apps and services: Atlassian’s JIRA, Google Drive, Slack, Trello, DropBox and OneDrive.
Design Sprint Kit Template
Works best for:
Agile Methodology, UX Design, Sprint Planning
With the right focused and strategic approach, five days is all it takes to address your biggest product challenges. That’s the thinking behind Design Sprint methodology. Created by Tanya Junell of Blue Label Labs, this Design Sprint Kit provides a set of lightweight templates that support the Design Sprint’s collaborative activities and voting—and maintains the energy, team spirit, and momentum that was sparked in the session. Virtual sprint supplies and prepared whiteboards make this kit especially useful for remote Design Sprint Facilitators.
Stakeholder Analysis Template
Works best for:
Project Management, Strategic Planning, Project Planning
Managing stakeholders is integral to completing a project on time and meeting expectations, so here’s how to use a stakeholder analysis to help. A stakeholder analysis empowers you to meet expectations and complete projects on time by identifying individuals, groups, and organizations with a vested interest in a program or process. In a typical stakeholder analysis, you’ll prioritize stakeholders based on their influence on a project and seek to understand how best to interface with them throughout the course of the project.
Blue Ocean 4 Actions Framework Template
Works best for:
Leadership, Decision Making, Strategic Planning
For entrepreneurs, so much comes down to new users—how to attract them, impress them, and convert them to loyal customers. This template, designed by the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, will help you maximize value for you and your customers alike. Using the template’s four steps (divided into easy columns), you’ll easily evaluate your products in more innovative ways and make sure money is being spent in areas that really matter.
Love Bomb Icebreaker Template
Works best for:
Icebreakers
Encourage team members to show their appreciation for each other using Miro’s free Love Bomb Icebreaker Template. Participants can add words or phrases that show what they appreciate about their colleagues.
Features Audit Template
Works best for:
Desk Research, Product Management, User Experience
Add new features or improve existing features—those are the two paths toward improving a product. But which should you take? A features audit will help you decide. This easy, powerful product management tool will give you a way to examine all of your features, then gather research and have detailed discussions about the ones that simply aren’t working. Then you can decide if you should increase those features’ visibility or the frequency with which it’s used—or if you should remove it altogether.