Other Considerations

As with requirements elicitation, requirements prioritization has been a thorny issue for decades. In addition to T-shirt sizing and story mapping, consider the following useful techniques.

Dot voting

In dot voting, each stakeholder is given a fixed number of dots—for example, 10 dots. Stakeholders allocate their dots among requirements any way they see fit. All 10 dots on 1 requirement, 1 dot each on 10 different requirements, 5 on 1, and 1 each on the rest—anything is possible. The technique provides a quick way to discover the priorities of a group.

MoSCoW

“MoSCoW” is a mnemonic for Must have, Should have, Could have, Won’t have. It is a useful method of partitioning proposed requirements into categories.

MVE

MVE is an acronym for Minimum Viable Experiment, which refers to the smallest release that can be used to provide valuable feedback to the team. MVE is supportive of work in Cynefin’s Complex domain; it amounts to a probe that’s used to explore a possible product direction.

Alternatives to MVP

Some teams find that keeping the minimum viable product to a minimum can be a challenge. If you encounter that problem with your teams, consider alternative formulations of “minimum,” including earliest testable product, earliest usable product, and earliest lovable product.

Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF)

Weighted Shortest Job First is a technique for maximizing value based on the sequence in which work is performed. WSJF is discussed in in the “More Effective Agile Portfolio Management” chapter.