How to Prioritize Requirements Effectively: Techniques Every BA Should Know

As a Business Analyst, we often face one constant challenge that is every requirement feels important to someone. Sponsors need their requirements to be placed as high value, business users want their features to be delivered first and technical teams highlight dependencies. In the middle of all these scenarios, BA is the only one who brings clear alignment and clarity to these requirements through requirement prioritization. In an ideal case, every requirement should be implemented but in real case scenario it is not always possible because of certain constraints such as resources, budget, scope and so on. Here comes prioritization into play, it helps teams to focus on value, ensure effort is spent wisely, reduces risks of failure and increases stakeholder satisfaction. Without prioritization, projects can deliver low value features first and leave important features behind which cause delays, mess up with timeline and frustrate the stakeholders. Some common challenges BA faces in Prioritizing requirements: Although we know the importance of prioritization but it is not always easy to implement, BA often faces few common challenges which are: • Each department thinks their requirements are top priority because of certain reasons which clashes with stakeholder priorities. • In business environment, priorities get changed due to new regulations or change in market. • Some requirements that look simple may depend on some unfinished work that need to be finished first to work on the requirements. • Senior management pushing for their preferred features to be finished first regardless of the value. Therefore, BA needs Prioritization techniques to prioritize the requirements in terms of their value, impact and other parameters that need to be taken into considerations. There are few techniques that a BA should know to prioritize the requirements. Prioritization Techniques every BA should know: • MoSCoW Method: MoSCoW is one of the widely used prioritization techniques which is used in requirement gathering to decide the priority when time is short. It categorizes requirements into the following: Must Have: Requirements that re essential without which the project fails. Should Have: Requirements that re important but not critical. Could Have: Requirements that re nice to have that can enhance user experience but not important Won’t Have: Requirements that are out of scope for now. • Kano Model: This model helps prioritize the requirements based on customer satisfaction. This model fits well where customer satisfaction is a key; it gives priority based on: Basic needs: There requirements are expected, if not present will cause dissatisfaction among customers. Performance needs: The faster the better rule, requirements that improve the performance directly improves customer’s satisfaction. Delighters: Requirements that are unexpected give utter satisfaction to the user unexpectedly but are not demanded by the customer. • 100-Dollar Test: This prioritization technique is used to assign business value to the requirements. Stakeholders are given a hypothetical budget of “100 dollar” to allocate across requirements. The more points they assign to a requirement, the higher the priority. This method makes stakeholder to think critically about trade-offs and assign values to the requirements accordingly. It is best used when multiple stakeholders are involved. As BA, Requirement prioritization is not about making decisions alone, it is to facilitate the discussions among the stakeholders, provide prioritization techniques to give priority to requirement. Also highlight dependencies and risks that affect the order, document everything and communicate decisions for transparency. For BA, mastering prioritization means ensuring the requirements are being prioritized according to the business value that is impactful should be delivered first by implementing correct techniques based on the situation.