PMP® Concepts series: Requirements Prioritising techniques (MoSCow, Kano Model, Paired Comparison Analysis and the 100 points Method).

by: Hammam Elmahi  MBA | BSc. Electrical Engineering | PMP® | PMI-RMP®| DASM® 

In scope planning, either predictive or Agile approaches, the project manager/product owner should collect requirements from the stakeholders that satisfy them. He/she may collect many requirements which must be prioritized according to the project objectives.

As a PMP® certification holder, seeker or even a project management practitioner, there are many tools and techniques you should understand to prioritize the requirement and it is important for the PMP exam. In this essay, I will explain those techniques and give you some tips and keywords that will help you to recall them. The techniques I will cover are MoSCoW Analysis, Kano Model, Paired Comparison Analysis, and the 100 Points Method.

1- MoSCoW Analysis

Developed by Dai Clegg, He created the MoSCoW method while working at Oracle, as a software developer. According to this technique you work on stakeholder understanding by looking at their preferences among a range of requirements. Specifically, you look at:

1. M – Must have: What is the requirement that must be in your product service or result? For ex. The website must support 2 languages English and Arabic.
2. S – Should have: what requirement we should have, the one is that adds important value but is not essential or vital? For instance: the website should have a filter for products by pricing.
3. C- Could have: ask the stakeholder about features that could the product have. For example: a live chat support feature for assistance.
4. W –Won’t have (for now): the stakeholder should clarify the specific feature that he will not have at least for now. This will help to avoid scope creep. For example: Users won’t have access to a mobile app version.

2- Kano Model

It was developed by Noriaki Kano a Japanese quality consultant, author and lecturer. Kano model is a customer satisfaction model, where the project manager/product owner prioritises and classifies the requirements or features as Delighters/exciters, Satisfiers, basic needs, and Indifferent. After that, execution work can focus on what influences customer satisfaction and loyalty at most. Look at the following:

1. Delighters/exciters: these are features that a customer didn’t ask for or expect, and can give a company a competitive advantage. However, a customer wouldn’t miss those features should we not add them. For example, a built-in projector feature on smartphones could be an exciter.
2. Satisfiers/performance: a good camera resolution is a satisfier feature in the smartphone which affects a customer’s decision to purchase the phone. Another example is good quality ceramic or flooring material for a construction project. Satisfiers are features that have linear proportionate with customer satisfaction, better performance leads to higher satisfaction and vice versa.
3. Basic needs: those are features that customers expect to be present in a product, their absence leads to dissatisfaction but their presence is normally expected. A simple example is reliable breaks in a car is a basic need because it is just expected.
4. Indifferent: These are requirements that don’t make a real difference for the customer. For example, cup holders in cars or installed games on smartphones. We need to know the indifferent features because it helps keep us on target and avoid scope/feature creep.

3– Paired Comparison Analysis

It was suggested by LL Thurston a psychometrician pioneer based on his theory: ‘’law of comparative judgment’’ which suggests that we can relatively decide which option is better between A & B options with an acceptable level of uncertainty. So Paired Comparison Analysis ranks and rates alternatives by comparing one against another. This is used when we have a small range of subjective requirements.

4- The 100 Points Method

It is a voting technique developed by Dean Leffingwell and Don Widrig who were known for developing the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). In this technique, the stakeholder will have 100 points to distribute on a list of requirements according to their importance to them in any way they want. This method is suitable for any size of group including large ones. Besides that, it is different from other methods because it gives the stakeholder the priority to make a decision, as they have only 100 points to distribute they should think deeply before placing the point at an option.

Conclusion:

There are many key points to consider to recall the correct technique and differentiate between them(also help for PMP® EXAM). For MoScoW analysis it is common with software development specifically Scrum, RAD and DSDM. It is also used with time boxing and that helps to put the focus on the important features. Kano’s model focuses on drawing more effort toward requirements that satisfy and delight the customer. Paired comparison analysis is used for likely small ranges or alternatives, while the 100-point technique is used for a big scale of options selected by the stakeholders.