Prioritization, Who How Why...

Who needs to prioritize?

In a typical project execution we have several roles who participate in making things happen. In a scrum framework we have Product owner, Scrum Master, development team 

All these roles have a common goal which is to make project a success.But what does success mean is defined by customer and her needs/wants/desires. 

Hence it is very much important for Product owner to first prioritize what will help her first. The same prioritization can be translated to Team and Scrum Master. 

Hence the answer is Prioritization is for everyone however team can influence PO in making the right decision.

 How to prioritize?

There is no magic formula for prioritization, though there are techniques like MOSCOW rule  but i have noticed for customer everything is MUST HAVE.

This will not help customer as it would lead to a wrong product which may not help customer. Remember 80/20 rule, 80 perc of the user use 20perc of the feature in a product.

I suggest ask questions like what will happen if this feature is not there in product then what will happen. Impact decides the priority. The more a feature solves a problem the higher the priority it will have.

Why prioritize?

I guess by now it should be clear that for all the roles involved in a project, Prioritization is MUST. What if we don't prioritize we may end up delivering which was not needed. 

Remember Agile is delivering most important things fast and NOT delivering too many things fast.