MoSCoW Matrix Template
Use the MoSCow Method to efficiently place deliverables in a matrix to understand their importance 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.
Cost-Benefit Analysis Template
Works best for:
Leadership, Decision Making, Strategic Planning
With so many day-to-day decisions to make—and each one feeling high-stakes—it’s easy for all the choices to weigh a business or organization down. You need a systematic way to analyze the risks and rewards. A cost benefit analysis gives you the clarity you need to make smart decisions. This template will let you conduct a CBA to help your team assess the pros and cons of new projects or business proposals—and ultimately help your company preserve your precious time, money, and social capital.
Effective Meeting Template by Zoom
Works best for:
Team Meetings
Run effective meetings and keep everyone focused with Zoom’s Effective Meeting Template. Bring structure and creativity to every online meeting.
Project Charter Template
Works best for:
Project Management, Documentation, Strategic Planning
Project managers rely on project charters as a source of truth for the details of a project. Project charters explain the core objectives, scope, team members and more involved in a project. For an organized project management, charters can be useful to align everyone around a shared understanding of the objectives, strategies and deliverables for a project of any scope. This template ensures that you document all aspects of a project so all stakeholders are informed and on the same page. Always know where your project is going, its purpose, and its scope.
Executive Summary Template
Works best for:
Leadership, Project Management, Documentation
Pique their curiosity. Get them excited. Inspire them to keep reading, diving further into your proposal details. That’s what a good executive summary has the power to do—and why it’s a crucial opening statement for business plans, project plans, investment proposals, and more. Use this template to create an executive summary that starts building belief, by answering high-level questions that include: What is your project? What are the goals? How will you bring your skills and resources to the project? And who can expect to benefit?
Status Report Template
Works best for:
Project Management, Documentation, Strategic Planning
A status report provides a snapshot of how something is going at a given time. You can provide a status report for a project, a team, or a situation, as long as it emphasizes and maps out a project’s chain of events. If you’re a project manager, you can use this report to keep historical records of project timelines. Ideally, any project stakeholder should be able to look at a status report and answer the question, “Where are we, and how did we get here?” Use this template as a starting point to summarize how something is progressing against a projected plan or outcome.
Kaizen Report Template
Works best for:
Agile Methodology, Operations, Documentation
What makes a great company great? They know that greatness needs to be fostered and maintained — meaning they never stop working to improve. If you’re one of those companies (or aspire to be), a kaizen report is an ideal tool. It creates a simple visual guide to continuous improvement activities on a team, departmental, and organizational level. Using a kaizen report approach, every employee in an organization audits their own processes and understands what they might have overlooked, making this a powerful tool for increasing accountability at all levels.