MoSCoW Method??

While I was having a meeting with a project team, I was asking for an update on testing done on an application after  the solution  was provided for some issues

I was shown an excel sheet with few columns. Column showed the existing issues, remarks and challenges, status. But again, there was one more column which was filled only with a single characters.

Each line item was flagged either M/S/C/W.

When I asked the team ,what did that symbolize I was told “Its MoSCoW Method”

Now I only knew there is a city called MOSCOW..um somewhere is Russia?? But I din’t knew method by that name existed. As I discussed over the call, I came to know about this nice Agile methodology

So what’s this now?

MoSCoW stands for:

M: Must have

S: Should have

C: Could have

W: Won’t Have

They were talking about the attributes the website should be having. Technically we call it as ‘functionality’

This method is basically a way to prioritize the requirement

1. Must have’s “they are the attribute which are non-negotiable and must be included for the successful functioning of an application
2. Should have: they are high priority attribute should be included if possible.
3. Could have: they need not be so critical but a nice-to-have features in the website
4. Won’t have: they are low priority attributes. Even if they are not available there won’t be any problem. We can consider this in future

So I understood that’s how they prioritize the customer requirement and found I can implement in my work too

By the way I see this can be implemented in day to day life too. Go check out how.(Hint: replace website by Human being) Share your views, folks.

Kaizen whiteboards

Couple of days back there was an announcement in our office that each team will be given a very big White Boards. This is called Kai-zen Whiteboards.

Well before I Proceed I would like give a brief idea on Kai-zen. Its means Change for Good.

It is the practice of continuous improvement. Kaizen was originally introduced to the West by Masaaki Imai in his book Kai-zen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success in 1986.

Now all we got to do is come up with our own format which gives a quantitative outlook of our performance each day.

We provide technical solutions to our customers and what we could think of is how many:

• Issues are resolved??
• Under progress
• Pending for Customer Updates

So now this will clearly give you facts and figures on the service we provide.

But idea behind this is to increase productivity. Now I don’t know how much this is going to help us increase productivity

There are multiple teams around us and I believe this is not to showcase it to many but to analyze own performance.

So I came up with 2 other sections which like

• Setbacks
• Improvements and other priorities

 

People came for an audit and found many have a similar template and I came up with my priority matrix

And quotes for the day .:

“5 little goals done a day  lead to 1850 goals achieved end of the year”

Somehow it can be an advantage or time consuming things. So what do you guys think ??