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RICE: a Simple Prioritization Framework

RICE is a simple prioritization method created by Intercom.

This scoring system relies on four factors:

  • 👥 Reach
  • 📈 Impact
  • 😊 Confidence
  • 💪 Effort

The reach depends on the context and has to be defined. It can be how many people will be reached by an initiative in a given timeframe. Ex: Launch a new feature that will be used by 200 customers in the next quarter would produce a reach score of 200.

The impact can reflect quantitative or qualitative expected outcomes. Ex: increase conversion by 20%. You can use a simplified scoring to grade it, 5 for a massive impact, 1 for a low impact.

The confidence helps to judge if the reach and impact factors are based on intuition or based on a predictive model. You can use a simplified scoring to grade it, 100% is high confidence, 50% is low confidence.

The effort is the single factor to represent the cost of the initiative. You can estimate it with the required investment to achieve the project. Ex: a five person-months estimation will give a scoring of 5.

The RICE score will be (Reach x Impact x Confidence) / Effort.

In our example, (200 x 4 x 100%) / 5 = 160.

Equipping a product team with a shared scoring method may help to compare and prioritize different initiatives.

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