From the course: Applying Agile MoSCoW Prioritization

Techniques

From the course: Applying Agile MoSCoW Prioritization

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Techniques

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- Defining and then prioritizing requirements seems as simple as just drawing up a list and applying MoSCoW, but as we have different levels of requirements and shifting priorities, this is not always the case. So where do we begin and how do we know what level to break the products down to? In my experience, the best way to begin this process is usually in a workshop environment with a large number of Post-it notes and a whiteboard. The product owners and development teams must also be present. This exercise is carried out in the feasibility stage of the project and will be repeated again during the definition stage, adding more detail as we know more about the project and again carried out in even more detail before each incremental development stage. Typically, the process starts off by looking at what the project wants to deliver and the outcomes expected from this product. So considering a theme park website project, we've just stuck a Post-it note at the top of a whiteboard which shows the overall goal of the project. Now we can start to expand this a little further and add in more detail. It could now include some of the high level requirements. Following this exercise, the product owners will be consulted to identify the quality criteria for each of the requirements. The quality criteria will enable us to test the product for compliance and approval by the customer. So let's just take one of these products now and show how this can be further detailed during one of the incremental development stages. This is sometimes called decomposition. Note that the level of detail is increasing as we start to break down the slightly larger requirements into smaller, more detailed requirements. We can now take each of these more detailed requirements and identify what information we need to complete that requirement and how long each one will take and even who might be doing it. Using this information, we should now be able to clearly define what products need to be produced, what quality criteria they'll need to meet to be acceptable and what work is involved. We'll also need to know who might need to do the work and from the quality criteria, what testing will need to be applied before the product is approved. This all contributes to the creation of a plan.

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