I’ve never heard of this method before, but it’s definitely interesting enough to link up for you:

At its core, the MoSCoW method is simply a prioritization framework that can be applied to any kind of situation or project, but it works best when a large number of tasks need to be ruthlessly whittled down into a prioritised and achievable to-do list.

The general idea is you take a list of tasks/stories/whatevs and place each into one of for buckets: Must, Should, Could, and Won’t. (Somehow this gets shortened to MoSCoW for the namesake.)

If you listened to our recent episode on Agile, you know I’m not a fan of ceremony when it comes to planning practices, but I do think there is some value here if you do it right. Click through for the skinny on how to run a MoSCoW exercise as well as some pitfalls to avoid.