Prioritization in Action
How the MoSCoW Method Helps You Make Real Progress
At JKS Digital, we don’t just talk about strategy—we live it. One of the most powerful tools in our strategic toolbox is the MoSCoW method, and if you’ve read our case study on streamlining success, you’ve seen just a glimpse of what it can do. But we realized something after publishing that story: while people loved seeing the results, they wanted more clarity on how we used the MoSCoW method to get there. So here it is—this blog is your behind-the-scenes look at using MoSCoW in real-world, often messy, business situations.
Let’s walk through what happens when you stop trying to do everything at once—and start doing the right things in the right order.
A Quick Refresher on MoSCoW
Before we dive in, here’s a no-fluff breakdown of what MoSCoW actually stands for:
Must-Have
Should-Have
Could-Have
Won’t-Have (for now)
It’s a framework used to prioritize tasks, features, or actions based on how essential they are to the success of a project or business objective. While it might sound simple, the magic is in the conversations it sparks and the clarity it brings.
Where Things Usually Go Off the Rails
Let’s say you’re a business owner or marketing director overseeing a website relaunch, CRM integration, and paid media rollout—all at once. You’ve got different vendors, internal stakeholders with competing opinions, and a finite amount of time and money.
We’ve seen this play out more times than we can count: teams try to launch with every integration, every design revision, every feature, and every marketing channel firing at once. And what happens? Bottlenecks, scope creep, staff burnout, and a whole lot of budget spent with very little to show for it.
This is where MoSCoW shines—not just as a project management tool, but as a reality check.
MoSCoW in the Real World: One Story, Many Lessons
We worked with a direct-to-consumer brand that had big dreams—and a bloated tech stack. They were using five different apps to run marketing automations, customer reviews, loyalty programs, popups, and inventory alerts. Their team was juggling too many platforms, manually updating product feeds, and dealing with clunky workarounds that slowed down their site and their staff.
When we were brought in, they didn’t need a bigger marketing budget—they needed a better way to prioritize what actually mattered.
So we led them through a MoSCoW session. Here’s how that looked in practice:
Must-Haves: Fix broken automations that impacted revenue. Ensure the website checkout was functional across all devices. Consolidate redundant apps that were hurting site speed and costing extra money.
Should-Haves: Improve email segmentations to lift conversion rates. Update abandoned cart flow with smarter logic. Standardize review prompts to boost social proof.
Could-Haves: Launch loyalty rewards. Explore more advanced post-purchase upsell tactics.
Won’t-Haves (For Now): Rebuilding the entire customer dashboard from scratch. Integrating with every third-party logistics partner under the sun. Redesigning every page to match a new brand guideline that wasn’t finalized yet.
We didn’t kill their ideas—we shelved them for later. That distinction matters. MoSCoW isn’t about saying no forever; it’s about saying not right now so you can focus on the things that will move the needle today.
The Business Results of Prioritizing the Right Way
By focusing on what mattered most, this brand was able to:
Eliminate $1,200/month in redundant app costs
Improve site speed by 22%
Lift conversion rate by 15%
Reduce manual work hours by nearly 40%
All without adding any new staff or increasing their ad spend.
The takeaway here isn’t just “MoSCoW works.” It’s that having a clear prioritization framework forces alignment. It gives decision-makers, developers, marketers, and designers a shared language for deciding what to do next. And that kind of alignment? It’s priceless.
How to Facilitate a MoSCoW Workshop Without Losing Your Mind
You don’t need to turn it into a week-long retreat. In fact, some of our most productive MoSCoW sessions take under two hours. The key is creating a space where your team can be brutally honest about what’s critical, what’s nice to have, and what’s just a distraction.
Here’s what we suggest:
Start with the objective. Are you launching a new product? Redesigning your website? Scaling operations?
List every task, feature, or idea in the pipeline. Don’t edit yourself—get it all on the table.
As a group, categorize each item into one of the four MoSCoW buckets. This often reveals just how much energy is being spent on things that aren’t tied to your core goal.
Assign timeframes. Must-haves should be completed in the next sprint or cycle. Should-haves get slotted into the following phase. Could-haves can float as “parking lot” ideas. Won’t-haves are documented and paused.
Review monthly. What was a “Won’t-Have” last quarter might become a Must-Have if your business shifts. MoSCoW isn’t one-and-done; it’s a rhythm.
Why MoSCoW Works Even Better in Messy Teams
Here’s the truth no one likes to admit: most teams have conflicting priorities. Sales wants new features. Marketing wants better data. Ops wants fewer steps. Leadership wants it done yesterday. And if you try to satisfy everyone at once, you’ll end up satisfying no one.
MoSCoW creates a structure where everyone gets a seat at the table—but not everything gets a greenlight. It’s a way to turn noise into strategy.
And if you're a leader or business owner feeling overwhelmed, MoSCoW can give you the confidence to make hard calls without feeling like you’re dropping the ball.
Our Favorite Use Cases for MoSCoW (Besides Projects)
While MoSCoW is often used in product management and Agile software development, we use it for all sorts of business decisions:
Choosing what metrics to focus on each quarter
Planning marketing campaigns with limited resources
Streamlining onboarding processes
Evaluating new technology or vendors
Cleaning up bloated SOPs or workflows
Basically, anywhere you’re stuck deciding what’s “worth it” and what’s just noise—MoSCoW can help.
The Real Power of Saying “Not Now”
When we look back at the brands we’ve helped grow, the biggest breakthroughs didn’t come from doing more. They came from doing less—but doing it better. MoSCoW helps us (and our clients) move out of decision paralysis and into focused, intentional action.
If you’re in the thick of a complex project or trying to wrangle a dozen competing priorities, we can’t recommend it enough: take two hours, gather your team, and run a MoSCoW session.
The clarity is worth it. The momentum is everything.
And if you want help? You know where to find us.
Final Thoughts
Good strategy isn’t about saying “yes” to everything. It’s about saying “yes” to the right things and having the discipline to say “not now” to the rest.
The MoSCoW method gives you a practical, repeatable way to do just that—without burning out your team or blowing your budget.
At JKS Digital, we use MoSCoW not because it’s trendy, but because it works. And we’ll keep using it every time we want to help a brand get unstuck, get smart, and grow.
