💃📝 The prioritization dance

A long list of potential features, tasks, or project ideas can feel overwhelming. Whether you’re managing a list of website features, articles that need to be updated, or simply tackling your daily to-do list, prioritization is key to making sense of it all. You don’t need a complicated system—even a simple spreadsheet can help categorize your tasks or ideas and bring a group of decision-makers together to set priorities.

This tip is a good overview of prioritization itself, but if you want a whole Guide to managing your website project tasks, or a downloadable template to help you make sense of what you should do next (free subscription required)… well, we have those too!

What priorities should you use? The MoSCoW method is useful—no passport required, just a sense of organization (and appreciation for a good mnemonic)!

• Must Have: These are your non-negotiables. The project can’t move forward without them. Ask yourself, “Will the project still function without this?” If the answer is no, it’s a “must have.” Be selective here—if everything is a priority, nothing truly is.
• Should Have: These are important things that will greatly improve the project, but aren’t essential. Include these if they are low-effort, but don’t let them derail you.
• Could Have: These are your “nice to haves”. They add value but aren’t critical. If time or budget allows, include them. Otherwise, save them for later.
• Won’t Have: These won’t be included in the current project at all, but it’s useful to document why. By keeping track of what you’ve ruled out, you avoid revisiting the same discussions later. Sometimes features end up here because they’re common but you know they’re not something you want, or you’ve already had a final decision.

This system works whether you’re prioritizing alone or in a meeting with a team. For big lists or a big group of decision makers, use a survey or a cardsorting tool to ask your stakeholders to rate. (See a case study of this in action.) This allows you to collect everyone’s thoughts, and then only talk about the items where opinions differ.

By sorting your features (or tasks, if you’re project managing) using MoSCoW, you’ll be able to focus your efforts, make clearer decisions, and manage more effectively. That’s helpful by itself, but you can also add ballpark estimates to each item for even more powerful decision-making.

So, next time you’re drowning in possibilities, head to MoSCoW.

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Dive Deeper

​Understanding MoSCoW prioritization | Atlassian Community

A much deeper dive into the benefits of using a clear categorization system like MoSCoW, how to do it, and getting buy-in from your stakeholders. It’s focused on technology features, but virtually everything they say is equally valid for prioritizing content tasks, articles to be written, or any list of things you need to put order on.

​Digital Cardsorting to Determine Nonprofit Website Priorities | Laura S. Quinn

If you’re looking for a way to determine priorities for a number of things among a lot of different stakeholders, digital cardsorting—more typically used as a user research technique—can be very helpful. Here’s a case study! I worked with the Learning Policy Institute to wrangle a complex list of possible features and get buy-in on priority from more than a dozen stakeholders.

​It’s not prioritization until it hurts | Ami Vora

Here’s the same concept applied to the tasks in your work-life, focusing on the often-overlooked power of “won’t haves” to make room to really deliver well on the “must have” and “should haves”. And honestly, I just like the title. The same concept is true of the prioritization for any list—if it doesn’t feel a little painful, you’re likely not rating things critically enough.