Three proven techniques for product and strategy planning
We’ve just closed out the previous fiscal year, and many teams and companies are now revisiting their strategic objectives and product roadmaps. These sessions tend to generate long wish lists — filled with new ideas, previously postponed initiatives, and a few high-risk, high-reward experiments.
Prioritizing among them is rarely easy. Even harder is achieving consensus within the team on what to tackle first and what to postpone. The Pareto Principle suggests that roughly 80% of the outcomes stem from just 20% of the input. In product development, this implies that 80% of the business value often comes from 20% of the product backlog.
So how do you determine which tasks belong in that critical 20%? And how can you ensure your team focuses on what will actually drive impact?
Below are three practical prioritization techniques that help streamline decision-making and improve alignment.
Moscow analysis
The MoSCoW method is a widely used framework for sorting items by criticality. The acronym stands for:
- Must have
- Should have
- Could have
- Won’t have this time
After compiling a list of initiatives, the team sorts them into these four categories based on agreed criteria:
Must have
- Absolutely essential.
- The solution is not viable, legal, or functional without it.
- Ask: What happens if this isn’t delivered? If the answer is “cancel the project,” then it’s a Must.
Should have
- Important but not vital.
- May require workarounds (e.g. manual effort or communication).
- The solution can function without it, but it’s less effective.
Could have
- Desirable but non-essential.
- Easy to drop if time or budget runs short.
- Minimal negative impact if omitted.
Won’t have this time
- Explicitly out of scope for this delivery cycle.
- Helps clarify boundaries and prevent scope creep.
- Essential for expectation management and stakeholder alignment.
Clearly stating what won’t be included can be as valuable as deciding what will be. This category is often underused, yet extremely powerful.
Learn more here.
Simple methods to prioritize with confidence
These are just a few techniques that have repeatedly proven helpful in tough prioritization sessions. They’re easy to implement, highly adaptable, and particularly useful when a team is dealing with competing interests or limited resources.
Hope this overview is helpful. Feel free to share your own tips, tools, or feedback in the comments — always looking for better ways to prioritize smarter and work more effectively as a team.
Sources: Moscow Prioritisation Framework, Managing software requirements, Agile estimating and planning, Quality improvement.
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