Strategy

Design Criteria Canvas

A MoSCoW grid that turns a vision into non-negotiable, SMART criteria before you build.

What it is

Four boxes — Must Haves, Should Haves, Could Haves and Won't Haves — sort criteria drawn from the vision, customer research and known constraints. The exercise pushes every surviving criterion to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound before it counts as done.

Reach for it when

  • A team that says a solution must 'delight users' with no way to check that later
  • A project scoping vague requirements that everyone privately interprets differently
  • A group that needs to agree what's explicitly out of scope, not just what's in

Running it

  1. Prepare a relaxed environment with markers and sticky notes for a 45-minute session.
  2. Have team members individually generate criteria from the vision, customer research and known constraints before any discussion.
  3. Place sticky notes on the canvas together and discuss where each one actually belongs.
  4. Sort into Must / Should / Could / Won't using MoSCoW, rewrite each surviving criterion to be SMART, and revisit the canvas periodically as perspective evolves.

Watch out: The Won't Haves box is the one teams skip — it's easier to agree what to build than what to explicitly rule out, and skipping it is exactly what lets scope creep back in later.