Client wants fifteen things. Yesterday. Budget for five.

“High priority.” “Medium priority.” “Low priority.” By the end of the meeting everything is high priority. Those labels are worthless.

MoSCoW forces choices.

Must have – without this the project fails. Non-negotiable.

Should have – important, but can wait if it must.

Could have – nice to have, and the first thing to drop when time is tight.

Won’t have – not now. Explicitly out of scope.

The uncomfortable moment comes when you go through the list together. They can’t have everything. That’s the point.

Clients try to make everything a Must have. Push back: “If we can only deliver three things, which three?”

And be firm about Won’t haves. Feels uncomfortable, prevents misery. “We agreed that analytics dashboards are out of scope. Correct?”

A client wanted to rebuild their portal. First list: 42 features. After MoSCoW: 6 Must haves, 8 Should haves, 12 Could haves, 16 Won’t haves. Budget allowed for Must haves plus half of Should haves. Launched in six weeks, not six months.

Scope creep becomes simple. Someone requests something new? “Is this a Must have? Then something else has to move to Won’t have.”