Why do we need prioritization?
If you’ve put the effort into brainstorming new ideas, finding opportunities for improvement, and collecting feedback, you’ll have a solid product roadmap full of good ideas. But the order in which you tackle those ideas and solve problems deserves just as much thought. You need to take the time to prioritize well.
Prioritization is a difficult problem, but why?
- It’s satisfying to work on pet ideas you’d use yourself, instead of projects with broad reach.
- It’s tempting to focus on clever ideas, instead of projects that directly impact your goals.
- It’s exciting to dive into new ideas, instead of projects that you’re already confident about.
- It’s easy to discount the additional effort that one project will require over another.
This is where a scoring system comes in. A good prioritization framework can help you consider important factors about a project idea and combine those factors in a rigorous, consistent way. One of such framework is - RICE.
RICE score: a simple tool for prioritization
RICE is an acronym for the four factors we use to evaluate each project idea: reach, impact, confidence and effort.
Reach
To avoid bias towards features you’d use yourself, estimate how many people each project will affect within a given period.
Reach is measured in number of people/events per time period. That might be “customers per quarter” or “transactions per month”. As much as possible, use real measurements from product metrics instead of pulling numbers from a hat.
Example: 500 customers reach this point in the signup funnel each month, and 30% choose this option. The reach is 500 × 30% × 3 = 450 customers per quarter.
Impact
To focus on projects that move the needle on your goal, estimate the impact on an individual person. Impact is difficult to measure precisely.
So, choose from a multiple-choice scale: 3 for “massive impact”, 2 for “high”, 1 for “medium”, 0.5 for “low”, and finally 0.25 for “minimal”. These numbers get multiplied into the final score to scale it up or down.
Choosing an impact number may seem unscientific. But remember the alternative: a tangled mess of gut feeling.
Example: For each customer who sees it, this will have a huge impact. The impact score is 3.
Confidence
To curb enthusiasm for exciting but ill-defined ideas, factor in your level of confidence about your estimates. If you think a project could have huge impact but don’t have data to back it up, confidence lets you control that.
Confidence is a percentage, and I use another multiple-choice scale to help avoid decision paralysis. 100% is “high confidence”, 80% is “medium”, 50% is “low”. Anything below that is “total moonshot”. Be honest with yourself: how much support do you really have for your estimates?
Example:
- We have quantitative metrics for reach, user research for impact, and an engineering estimate for effort. This project gets a 100% confidence score.
- I have data to support the reach and effort, but I’m unsure about the impact. This project gets an 80% confidence score.
Effort
To move quickly and have impact with the least amount of effort, estimate the total amount of time a project will require from all members of your team: product, design, and engineering.
Effort is estimated as a number of “person-months” – the work that one team member can do in a month. There are many unknowns here, so I keep my estimates rough by sticking to whole numbers (or 0.5 for anything well under a month). Unlike the other positive factors, more effort is a bad thing.
Example: This will take about a week of planning, 1-2 weeks of design, and 2-4 weeks of engineering time. I’ll give it an effort score of 2 person-months.
How to calculate the RICE score?
Once you’ve estimated these factors, combine them into a single score so you can compare projects at a glance. Here’s the simple formula:
RICE score = (Reach × Impact × Confidence) ÷ Effort
Of course, RICE scores shouldn’t be used as a hard and fast rule. There are many reasons why you might work on a project with a lower score first. One project may be a dependency for another project, so it needs to happen first, or another feature might be “table stakes” to sell to certain customers.
Sometimes you need to work “out of order.” A security issue, contractual commitment, dependency, or strategic bet may override the score. The value of RICE is not pretending the ranking is objective; it is exposing assumptions and making exceptions explicit.
Worked RICE example
Suppose an onboarding improvement will reach 4,000 users in a quarter, has an impact score of 2, confidence of 80%, and requires 4 person-months. Its score is (4,000 × 2 × 0.8) ÷ 4 = 1,600. Compare that number only with initiatives scored using the same reach period and impact scale.
Run sensitivity checks when estimates are uncertain. If a small change in confidence or effort reverses the ranking, the team may need more discovery before committing. Keep the source and date beside every input so the score does not outlive its evidence.