MoSCoW Prioritization

The MoSCoW method is a prioritization technique used in management, business analysis, and software development to reach a common understanding with stakeholders on the importance they place on the delivery of each requirement.

The Multilevel Select Picker is available in the JSM portal. For a list of supported fields and setup instructions, please visit Fields in Jira Service Management (JSM) Portal.

MoSCoW categories

The vital things for the product. If even one requirement is not included in the product delivery, it should be considered a failure.

Requirements are critical but not necessary for delivery in the current time box. Product works without should feature, but those still have crucial business value.

Requirements are not critical and often considered as nice to have. It is possible to reevaluate those requirements after some time.

Requirements have the lowest priority. This is because we are not deleting them from the backlog but usually sort them on the bottom.

Create and configure the custom field

To create and configure the MoSCoW prioritization custom field, you must be logged in as a user with Jira administrator permissions.

Go to Apps → Manage apps → Fields
Click on Create custom field button on the right side of the screen.
Select MoSCoW Prioritization and click Next.
Add Name and a description to your field then click Next.
Select between two available view options and click Next.
Associate the field to the appropriate screens and click Create. You must associate a field to a screen before it will be displayed.
To restrict editing access for the Multilevel Select Picker, the Edit Permissions tab is used. Specific users, user groups, and Jira roles can be defined to have editing permissions for the custom field. If editing access is intended for all users, the field should be left empty.

Please note that the create screen has a separate toggle that allows defining whether users without edit permissions can create values in create screens.

JQL queries

CFS - MoSCoW prioritization can be used in JQL. It allows you to search for issues that include custom field values. To find issues that include multilevel select picker values enter the "CustomField_Name". Below are a few useful examples.

"CFS - MoSCoW Prioritization" = must	Search for all issues that contain must priority.
"CFS - MoSCoW Prioritization" != must	Search for all issues that don´t contain must priority.
"CFS - MoSCoW Prioritization" is EMPTY	Search for all issues where the custom field is empty.
"CFS - MoSCoW Prioritization" is not EMPTY	Search for all issues where the custom field is not empty.