How to Discover Your Next Application’s Must-Haves: MoSCoW Method, UX Research, and Future-Proofing Features

In this guide, you’ll learn about how to properly use the MoSCoW method to determine your feature priorities, how to compare must-haves from nice-to-haves, how to use UX to guide feature prioritization, and what you must have to future-proof your application.

How Do You Use the MoSCoW Method to Find Feature Priorities?

To use the MoSCoW method for determining feature priorities, categorize your features into four groups—Must-Haves (essential for MVP functionality), Should-Haves (important but not immediately required), Could-Haves (nice additions for later), and Won’t-Haves (features to intentionally exclude) while ensuring stakeholder agreement and evidence-based analysis to avoid any bias that may arise between user needs and stakeholder wants.

Must-Haves: The Absolute Essentials

Must-Haves are the critical and essential features that form the foundation of your application’s core functionality and are absolutely necessary for your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to meet user requirements and business needs. They make up the core and the foundation of your application and what it is meant to offer. Without your Must-Haves, your application software will likely fail to meet both your users’ requirements and your business needs.

Some examples of Must-Haves include user authentication features to provide a secure login for users on any application, payment processing features for eCommerce platforms, and real-time messaging and document sharing within collaboration software.

Should-Haves: Important Features, But Are Not Immediately Required

Do you have a feature that would be great to have, but can wait until an update following a successful launch? Then it is likely a should-have. Should-haves are important features that add high value and greatly improve either the application’s user experience or its business value, but they are not necessary for your software’s initial release.

Examples of should-haves may include push notifications for a mobile-focused application, advanced reporting and analytics features for an enterprise software dashboard, or multi-language support for users in other parts of the world.

Could-Haves: Good Additional Value That Can Wait

You might have an idea for a feature that would be nice to have, but only if you have the resources and time for it later after launch—that would qualify as a could-have. Could-haves are features that add significant additional value to your applications, but they are neither necessary nor something that is urgently needed after your initial release.

Examples of could-haves include adding AI-powered chatbots to your application to enhance and automate customer support, offering customizable application themes for users to personalize their experience, and creating a dark mode or contrast mode to your mobile or web application.

Won’t-Haves: Features to Purposely Exclude

Won’t-Haves are features that you would intentionally leave out of your application’s initial development cycle because it may be out of scope, too expensive to implement, or simply unnecessary as you may have discovered through user research.

Examples of when a feature becomes a won’t-have include integrating complex virtual reality features into a basic education application, using cryptocurrency payments on an eCommerce platform during , or integrating social media into an application when it is either non-essential to the app’s functionality or unnecessary for early-stage user adoption.

How to Compare and Differentiate Must-Haves from Nice-to-Haves?

When comparing and differentiating between must-haves and nice-to-haves (should-haves and could-haves), your organization should seek to prioritize features based on how they impact your business goals, your users’ needs, and what resources you have at your disposal.

How to Define Your Must-Haves

To help define your must-haves, you’ll want to assess a potential core feature and ask yourself these questions:

• Does the feature serve a part of your application’s core functionalities? Does it meet the primary needs of your users, your business needs, and the primary goal of your software?
• Can the application function without the feature in question? Would excluding it make your app unusable or incapable of launching?
• Does the feature solve one or more core user problems?
• Does the feature offer to drive immediate business value and revenue?
• Does the feature provide a high positive impact on user experience?
• Do the features offer a low risk to the application’s development, and enhance the chance of a successful initial release?
• If you should find a feature to fail at answering these questions positively, it is likely to be a nice-to-have feature instead.

Example Comparison of Must-Haves Versus Nice-to-Haves

Here is an example of how you may use a chart to separate the must-haves from the nice-to-haves.

The result should be a list of features that form the core functionality of your initial release—doing this will protect you from delays, scope creep, and an application that compromises the user experience with feature clutter. You will want to also consider the UX when determining feature prioritization—after all, an application’s success will rest in users finding it easy and efficient to use.

How and Why is UX Crucial for Feature Prioritization?

Performing UX research and user behavior analysis is crucial for feature prioritization because of how it impacts user retention, greater adoption rates, less development waste, and competitive advantage.

• Better User Retention: When features are prioritized for how intuitive and helpful they are, it becomes easier for users to remain engaged for longer.
• Greater Adoption Rates: Users are more likely to adopt your app if features are made to enhance ease-of-use, provide frictionless navigation, and streamline onboarding.
• Lower Developer Waste: By keeping features aligned with users and their needs, you can avoid wasting resources on unnecessary features or features that lead to reduced engagement.
• Gaining Competitive Advantage: Having an application that offers a seamless UX will better outperform a competitor that has a hard-to-navigate interface bloated with unnecessary features.

Performing user research will require the use of different tools and techniques to gather the right information for behavioral analytics, identify friction points in your app’s design, and create an efficient feedback loop to ensure development resources are not wasted.

How to Perform UX Research and Identify Priority Features

You can perform UX research to identify priority features through methods like user interviews, competitor benchmarking and analysis, and using different tools like heatmaps, surveys, and usability testing to ensure the right features are chosen and contribute both to your application’s core functionalities while accommodating your users’ needs and expectations.

Ultimately, this will prevent your software from having unnecessary or bloated features and offer a smoother UX for all. But what metrics should you use to measure UX and discover those priority features?

What UX Metrics Help You Measure User Experience and Find Priority Features?

To measure user experience and find your priority features, use UX metrics such as Task Success Rate (TSR), Time on Task (TOT), Error Rate, and Net Promoter Score (NPS).

• Task Success Rate (TSR) – TSR is the percentage of users who succeed at completing key actions within your app.
• Time on Task (TOT) – TOT is the measurement of how long it takes for users to complete workflows. The lower the measurement, the better and more efficient the UX.
• Error Rate – Error rate refers to the tracking of how many user mistakes are made due to problems such as a confusing UI and poor design in navigation. Some ways to measure this include usability testing and session recordings.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS) – The NPS measures how likely users are in recommending your software application to others. One easy way to measure this is through user surveys.

How to Create a UX Impact Matrix

A UX Impact Matrix helps you and your team in separating UX-enhancing features into must-haves, should-haves, could-haves, and won’t-haves. The matrix consists of quadrants in a 2×2 grid. Along one axis would be two categories: “High Impact” and “Low Impact”. Along the other axis would be another two categories: “High Effort” and “Low Effort”. From there, you can work with your team to determine what features land in each quadrant.

Here’s how to interpret each quadrant and the features you place in them:

After you’ve found your must-have features to fulfill your application’s core functionalities and address your users’ pain points, there’s still the matter of ensuring that your software will be ready for the future.

What Must You Have to Future-Proof Your Application?

To future-proof your application tomorrow’s users and your business’ continuity, you’ll want to make sure that your software product is prepared to scale with growth, have an API-first approach in design, prioritize app security, utilize analytics, and maintain a user feedback loop. Without future-proofing, even the best apps succumb to costly refactoring, the need to total rebuild your software, faltering performance as your user base expands, incompatibility with new technologies, and the threat of security vulnerabilities and compliance risks.

Final Steps: Find Your Must-Haves with a Developer’s Eye

Looking to build your organization’s next application? Whether you’re planning the next best eCommerce platform, a SaaS product, or an MVP for a fintech app, it’s crucial to evaluate software development partners who can deliver on your vision. The Provato Group will work closely with you and your stakeholders to define your MVP must-haves, ensure your team is aligned on your software idea, and then transform that app idea into a future-proof reality.