After evaluating requirements, BAs need to prioritize them within the project. Basically, prioritization depends on several factors:
Business or commercial value: For example, requirements that, when implemented, can generate better revenue or optimize business processes will be prioritized.
Complexity: The difficulty of implementing the requirement. This depends on the requirement's impact on other features or the technical complexity of implementation.
Risk: The risk associated with not implementing the requirement, or the risk of impacting existing functionalities if implemented.
Feasibility: Feasibility is largely influenced by the technology used by the project team. Additionally, requirements that are too complex, carry high risk, and offer little value can also be considered infeasible.
Stakeholder desires: The desire or need to develop features/functions A, B, C first... This factor mainly comes from stakeholders like the sponsor, client, PO (Product Owner), or PM (Project Manager).
Development plan: Prioritizing requirements should also align with the agreed-upon plan between stakeholders. For example, if phase 1 requires A, B, and C, then prioritizing D might not be feasible.
When prioritizing, consider and combine multiple factors to ensure that requirements are arranged as logically as possible.
There are a few techniques I often use for prioritization analysis. Depending on the specific situation and project phase, I'll combine different factors and use one or more techniques simultaneously to achieve the most logical outcome.
MoSCoW: Stands for "Must-have," "Should-have," "Could-have," and "Won't-have." This method involves categorizing requirements into these buckets to determine their priority order: Must - Should - Could - Won't.
Value vs. Effort: This method evaluates the effort required and the value delivered by a requirement. High-value, low-effort requirements are prioritized first, followed by medium-value, low-effort requirements, then high-value, high-effort requirements, and finally, low-value, high-effort requirements (which might be omitted or addressed last).
Weighted Scoring: Uses a point system to assess priority based on important criteria such as profit potential, feasibility, and implementation capability. You'll need to list the categories you want to score and evaluate each requirement accordingly. This technique is quite complex and requires significant work experience and a thorough understanding of the client's business. When implementing this technique, I sometimes have to add weights to determine which categories are more important and calculate the weighted average (score * weight) / average to arrive at the final result.
Ranking & Voting: As the name suggests, this technique relies on ranking and voting by stakeholders. It requires good interaction and understanding of the requirements, business processes, and system among stakeholders.
Risk-Based Prioritization: Determine the level of risk and prioritize based on that level.
Impact vs. Effort: Similar to Value vs. Effort, requirements with high impact and low effort should be developed first.
These are the tools I frequently use for prioritization. In practice, there are many other tools and models for this purpose, such as the Kano model, AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process), Time-boxing & Budgeting. You can find more information about them online.
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