When Everything Is a "Must-Have," Nothing Is—Prioritization for Real-World Teams | Aliu Adewale

Summary

Podcast Summary: When Everything Is a "Must-Have," Nothing Is—Prioritization for Real-World Teams

Podcast: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Aliu Adewale
Date: July 8, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Vasco Duarte welcomes experienced Scrum Master and Agile leader Aliu Adewale to discuss the complex challenge of prioritization in real-world teams. Drawing on Aliu’s recent experience volunteering on a Parent Teacher Association (PTA) project, the conversation dives into practical issues with “must-have” overload, why traditional prioritization frameworks often fail, and hands-on tactics to focus teams when everyone wants everything at once—especially under tight deadlines.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Real-World “Must-Have” Problem

• Context (01:46–06:46):
  Aliu describes a community-driven project to develop a centralized app for parents/teachers, where feature suggestions ballooned to over 250 items as everyone saw their pet idea as essential.
  “The first time we met, we had about 250 ideas... right now my problem is prioritization, which I'm working through gradually. We only have three months...” (C, 02:28)
• Everyone claimed their favorite features were “must-haves,” echoing a common struggle in product development.

2. The Pitfalls of MoSCoW & Misunderstood Prioritization Methods

• Discussion (03:40–05:26):
  Vasco points out that methods like MoSCoW (must/should/could/won’t) lead to unhelpful categorization if everything is a “must.”
  “Many people will say that MoSCoW is a prioritization method. And I would say it is not, right? Because if everything ends up as a must, which is usually what happens, then there's no value to that information.” (B, 04:00)
• He further explains that simply classifying features doesn’t solve the hard trade-off problem—especially when dependencies and limited time exist.

3. Importance of Time Constraints in Prioritization

• Insight (05:26–09:06):
  Aliu underscores the importance of considering realistic timelines and delivery windows:
  “One thing that people don't consider is the timeline... You can classify something and everything might look good. Must have. But do you have time to achieve them?” (C, 05:28)
• They calculate that with six sprints across three months, not all “must-haves” are possible.

4. Tactics That Worked: Focused Short-Term Value

• Experiment & Shift in Mindset (07:05–10:07):
  Aliu recounts an exercise from a previous training that demonstrated how focusing on one task (“vertical work”) accelerates progress compared to multitasking, and applies this lesson to feature selection. “Teams need focus. We need to like— we are picking this one first. Don’t let us juggle. Let’s focus on what we need right now…” (C, 07:45)
• He guided the team to hone in on what is truly needed in the first three months rather than throughout the entire year. “When we streamlined that must have, we ended up with five or six features compared to 50.” (C, 09:12)

5. Handling Stakeholder Anxiety & Future-Proofing

• Observation (10:07–11:04):
  Both agree stakeholders often load up backlogs to “get their ask in,” fearing if they don’t, it won’t happen: “Stakeholders want to have everything at the same time because they think they must ask for it, otherwise they don't get it. It's almost self-inflicted.” (B, 10:07) Aliu adds that focusing too far ahead is wasted—“things can change” over a year, from policies to priorities—so build for what matters now.

6. Practical Prioritization Techniques & Coaching Tips

• Advice (11:04–12:04):
  • Shorten the time horizon of your question: “What do we need in the next month?” or even, “What’s preventing us from releasing tomorrow?” (B, 11:21)
  • This sharp focus often reveals true priorities, including operational or non-feature tasks.
  • Vasco encourages listeners: “Go shorter in the timeframe. That was brilliant.” (B, 11:45)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Ineffectiveness of MoSCoW:
  “If everything ends up as a must, which is usually what happens, then there's no value to that information.” — Vasco Duarte (B, 04:00)

• On Applying Focus:
  “Teams need focus. We need to like— we are picking this one first. Don’t let us juggle... Let’s focus on what we need right now.” — Aliu Adewale (C, 07:45)

• On Stakeholder Behavior:
  “Stakeholders want to have everything at the same time because they think they must ask for it, otherwise they don't get it. It's almost self-inflicted.” — Vasco Duarte (B, 10:07)

• On Time-Boxing for Clarity:
  “What do we need in the first three months?... Because one year out, some things might be sitting in the backlog that we will realize that things can change.” — Aliu Adewale (C, 09:06)

• On Releasing Early:
  “What's preventing us from releasing tomorrow? And that really focuses us on what really matters.” — Vasco Duarte (B, 11:23)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:46 — Aliu describes the unmanageable “must-have” backlog
• 03:40 — Vasco critiques the misuse of MoSCoW and “prioritization by classification”
• 05:26 — The impact of delivery deadlines on feature selection
• 07:05 — Aliu’s “vertical focus” exercise applied to team prioritization
• 09:06 — Real progress: “First three months” filter shrinks the feature list
• 10:07 — Why stakeholders overload backlogs
• 11:04 — Practical coaching tip: shorten the time horizon
• 11:45 — Mindset shift: What would you release tomorrow?

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Takeaway Lessons

• Prioritization is About Trade-Offs, Not Just Sorting.
• Limit time horizons to force real prioritization (“What must we deliver in three months?”).
• Beware of “everything is a must” culture; focus on what truly unlocks value or progress.
• Encourage teams to articulate, “What’s stopping us from shipping right now?”
• Reframe stakeholder conversations to address anxiety but keep attention on present goals.

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This episode is packed with practical advice for Scrum Masters and Agile leaders grappling with infinite “must-haves” and overstuffed backlogs. Aliu’s boots-on-the-ground experience and Vasco’s sharp analysis make this a must-listen for anyone wanting to up their prioritization game.

Transcript

[A]

Hey there, agile adventurer, just a quick question. What if for the price of a fancy coffee or half a pizza, you could unlock over 700 hours of the best agile content on the planet? That's audio, video, E courses, books, presentations, all that you can think of. But you can also join live calls with world class practitioners and hang out in a flame warfree and AI slop clean slack with the sharpest minds in the game. Oh, and yes, you get direct access to me, Vasko, your Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. No, this is not a drill. It's the Scrum Master Toolbox membership. And it's your unfair advantage in the agile world. So if you want to know more, go check out scrummastertoolbox.org membership. That's scrummastertoolbox.org Membership. And check out all the goodies we have for you. Do it now. But if you're not doing it now, let's listen to the podcast.

[B]

Hello everybody. Welcome to our Wednesday the big Challenge Question of the week this week with Aliu Adewale. Hey Aliu, welcome back.

[C]

Thank you Vasco. I'm happy to be back again.

[B]

So Aliu, on Wednesdays we talk about the big challenge, something you care about, a challenge you're facing and then we explore it together, hopefully modeling the coaching conversation that our listeners need to model every day. So let's pick a topic. So share the topic with us and then let's start the conversation. What topic do you bring to us this week, Aliu?

[C]

The topic I want to bring is prioritization. Prioritization. And we all struggle with it. Not even only Scrum Master. Even in our day to day life we struggle. We have so many beautiful things we want to do and at the end of the day when you have so many things, you end up doing nothing. So prioritization has been a challenge in one of the volunteer projects I'm working on with Parent Teacher association in my community. So and we all want to build something for the parents where they can actually like a centralized app for our school announcements, PTA updates, volunteer coordination, you know, an event reminder and all that. But prioritization has been an issue because everyone that supports this project comes from different backgrounds and different skill sets. We have people that for me right now my roles has evolved in my organization beyond Scrum Master, more like a leadership role. But right now on this particular project I'm serving as a Scrum Master for this group. We have people that are developers in their organizations. They have, some of them are executives too, but they actually want to contribute. But our problem right now is prioritization because everyone have so many lists. The first time we met, we had about 250 ideas. Like different things. They want to actually use features. Different features, the one they have to do for us. So right now my problem is prioritization, which I'm working through it gradually. We only have three months timeframe between when school goes on holiday to when they resume back.

[B]

Okay, so let's tackle that because prioritization and I want to explore this topic with you, but first let me introduce this idea. Prioritization is often confused with desirability or classification of features. Like for example, many people will say that Moscow or must should could want is a prioritization method. And I would say it is not right. Because if everything ends up as a must, which is usually what happens, then there's no value to that information. You end up having to prioritize everything that is in the must list anyway. So you're just delaying.

[A]

So you categorize, right?

[B]

Like that's basically what you do, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with categorization, but. But it's not prioritization. Then the other aspect that often confuses people is that people think that we need to prioritize a feature list, which is fine. Like there's nothing wrong. We may want to prioritize a feature list, but that assumes and needs the features to be fully independent from each other, which we know they are not. Right. Let's imagine your app has a login. Obviously you can't do a lot of the functionality without having the login. So there's also the dependency. So dependencies also come into prioritization and you know, front end, back end, dependencies, whatever. There's always a lot of dependencies in the software. So have you and the team already discussed these ideas or are you talking about prioritization still above this? Like without the full understanding of what it really is about and why you need to prioritize.

[C]

So thank you for bringing that up. When you say prioritization, right. One thing that people don't consider is the timeline how much time you have to deliver this. You can have 20 features you prioritize. Do you have duration of time to deliver it? What if you have only two months, three months? In our own case, right now we only have three months, 1st of June to end of August. So everything that everyone are bringing in to the table right now are nice to have. Oh, sorry, I take that back. I must have a lot of must have. And there's no way we can achieve all this. Must have. Just to complement what you said earlier, you can classify something and everything might be looks good. Must have. But do you have time to achieve them? So we have three months. Let's assume we are running a two week sprint. That's six sprints. Can we achieve all these? Must have within that time frame? No. So how can we pick the best out of all this? That's what we're currently dealing with right now with the team. And everyone wants something to be delivered.

[B]

Of course, because then there are different constituencies, right? Like there's, there's the parents, there's the students, there's the teachers, there's schools, all of that. So what have you tried so far to try to get to an agreement of what are the things we should do first versus what are the things we might do later.

[C]

So I tried something where it was challenging. I went for a training a couple of years ago for ACSM and I forgot the name of the coach that, that I worked with during that training. He did one experiment during our section where he has like list of names, animals and things and you have to go like first horizontally and after you finish, let's say 10 place 10 cars and 10 designers, you have to go horizontally first and you stop your time maybe that take 45 seconds. Then you do the same thing again but this time around you go vertically and you will realize that you complete what you did vertically compared to horizontally, like the fattest time more than like 10 seconds earlier. So teams need focus. We need to like we are picking this one first. Don't let us juggle. And that's to go back to your classification. Don't let us juggle from one must have to, must have. Let's focus on what we need right now. What do we need like in the next three months that can add value. So my approach to this group right now is what do we need the first three months when the school resume back?

[B]

That's the, that's, that's actually a great point because of course the, the school year has a full cycle and of course there might be semesters or, or you know, year divisions. Some, some countries have divide the year into three different divisions, others into two. Like it depends. But, and, and have you like what, what's been your interpretation does this, what do we need in the first three months? Has that helped people kind of focus and be able to prioritize?

[C]

Yes, absolutely. Because initially they were coming with what they need for the whole year, for the whole school year starting from FY27 year end, from August to next year, July. So my approach with the team was let's focus on first three months. All these must have what is coming in in the first three months. Let's focus on the. So let me throw it out there as a number. Let's say they have like 50 features. 50 nice to have attention. School announcement, teachers, messages, PTA updates, all these volunteer coordination and all that. When we streamline that must have. We ended up with five assist features compared to 50. And this happened in big organizations where they just want to. Stakeholders want to have everything at the same time because they think they.

[B]

They must ask for it, otherwise they don't get it. Right. Like it's. It's almost self inflicted.

[C]

Exactly, exactly. So that has really worked so far because I basically say, okay, we have three month timeline. We can get all of these features in three months. What is the first. First things that we need? Can we list out what we need in the first three months when the school is back? Let's focus on that first. Don't let us focus on one year out because one year out some things might be sitting in the backlog that we will realize that things can change. Government policy can change. Toward the end of the year, school can change their policies too, which most of this thing that we are focusing on right now might be useless at the end of the day. Let's focus of the most important things in the next three months. When the school resumed back then, we ended up with a short list of like seven features or six features compared to having like 6,070s.

[B]

Yeah, actually that technique is really great because you might even ask what do we need in. Let's say that you have a one month sprint, right. You might even ask what do we need in the first month? Because the second month you will still have one more sprint to execute, right?

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

That time constraint is actually a great focusing effect. I usually ask the teams that I work with what's preventing us from releasing tomorrow. And that really focuses us on what really matters. Right. Because of course we can say, okay, if we're going to release tomorrow, we need this, this and this.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's not a list of features anymore. It might be even, I don't know, operational things or whatever that might be. So that's a great experiment and one that I would definitely recommend our listeners also try like go shorter in the time frame. That was brilliant. Thank you for sharing that, Dalio.

[C]

Thank you so much, Basco.

[A]

All right.

[B]

I hope you liked this episode.

[A]

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[B]

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