What is requirement prioritization in Business analysis?

The practice of gathering requirements in ascending order of relative urgency and importance is known as requirements prioritizing. The necessity for requirements prioritizing is dictated by project restrictions like time and money. The project and product development team must prioritize some requirements to be implemented immediately and some to be held for a later release because clients and stakeholders typically view all requests as urgent and vital. Prioritizing requirements is a crucial component of planning a software release. The work done to fulfill the needs at the top of this list is given top priority over other requirements. It is vital for business analysts to understand the business case and the problem that the product will solve so that they can bridge the gap between the product development team and the stakeholders.

Below are Requirements prioritization techniques:

MoSCoW: This is the most commonly used method because it allows stakeholders to rate requirement priority in natural language terms such as Must, Should, Could, and Would. MoSCoW is an acronym that stands for the same thing.

MUST – This category includes requirements that must be met at all costs, also known as mandatory requirements.

SHOULD – Requirements that should be completed because they are of high value to the customer but are not the highest priority. However, failure to meet these requirements does not prevent the product from being launched.

WON’T HAVE – Features that have been requested but will not be included in this release. They can be delayed and included in subsequent releases.

Eisenhower’s decision-making matrix: The Eisenhower decision matrix, also known as the urgency and importance matrix, is based on two major decision-making factors: the urgency and importance of the requirement. Requirements can be classified into four types based on this four-quadrant matrix:

Priority level 1: Urgent and critical: Urgent and critical requirements must be met at all costs. These are usually about compliance, policy, or following the rules.

Priority level 2: Urgent but not critical: These requirements are time-sensitive and thus must be implemented first, but they are not critical to the project or product.

Priority level 3: Not Important, Urgent: Requirements that are important to the product but do not need to be implemented right away.

Priority level 4: Not important, not urgent: These requirements are neither urgent nor important and can be omitted entirely from the release.

Timeboxing and budgeting: The time boxing or fixed budgeting process is used when project deliverables have tight deadlines and budget constraints. Rather than implementing all features at once and launching the product at a later date, this technique suggests having the most important and basic product features in the product and launching it on time. The idea is to move the critical features to earlier phases of implementation to ensure that they are completed in an ideal manner by the time the product is released.

The 100-Point technique is the simplest way for prioritizing requirements and performs best when there are many criteria. Each stakeholder is given a set of points, say 100 points, and is asked to assign a number of points, out of 100, to each criteria according to its importance to him. In the end, points are allotted for each

Five Whys: This approach involves asking stakeholders “why” to uncover the real reasons behind the insistence about the importance of a specific requirement. When stakeholders believe that particular requirements are essential, the Five Whys method is extremely useful. They are not considered necessary for the product, business case, or in the best interests of the company, according to the business analyst and the product team. The Five Whys method works wonderfully in these situations to clearly comprehend the needs of the stakeholders and the driving forces behind pushing the adoption of particular requirements.