Where to start when plotting out your next festival, music studio step, or fashion event outline? With M-S-N! Not the early millennium chat, but the project management tip! Standing for “Must-Have, Should-Have, and Nice-to-Have”, M-S-N helps you think through your priorities and single out the features that are essential to your creative project's success.

1. Must-Have: No cinema festivals happen without screenings, no concerts without renting a sound system, and no fashion shows without a new collection. These are the non-negotiable conditions for the project to happen and unfold successfully, where you would lose your audience and partners if you don’t deliver to the highest standard. Work on your must-haves with no further delay and always keep it as a focal point.
    
2. Should-Have: These are features that are important, but not essential for the project to be considered successful and complete. For example, after securing the must-have equipment and conducting your market research you realized that being open 24/7 would make a difference as a competitive advantage. Organizing the night shifts to operate day in and out is a should-have. In terms of workload, it gives you some wiggle room in scope or timeline, but these assets should still be prioritized and completed as soon as possible. 
    
3. Nice-to-Have: It is possible for a storytelling festival to still hit the spots without a specific program for children or for a theater to run with no cafeteria. These are elements that would be great to have but are not essential for the project to be aced. Feel free to put them on hold or deprioritize if time, resources, or other factors become an issue.

M-S-N finds itself useful at the beginning of the project: list all your potential items and sort them out by categories to get a clear vision of what you should start with. The "must-have" items ought to be completed first - the rest will follow according to the time and resources you have at hand.

While developing your project, M-S-N thinking can also act as a breadcrumb trail to help you always move forward in the right direction. Quite often, exhilarated by the big picture of our long-term vision, we want to do everything at once. As creators, we often confuse what is alluring to us and what is, on the other hand, critical for the project at the moment, thus losing sight of the essentials and overlooking the possessed resources. Concentrate on your must-haves and keep leaving room for potential enhancements: Rome – Hollywood either – wasn't built in a day!

To help you prioritize and stay on track when starting off or developing your art project, we have prepared an M-S-N memo. Download it here.