Product managers today have a challenging task – choosing which features and initiatives to prioritize on their roadmaps from amongst a multitude of ideas. With development resources limited, not everything can make it onto the next release. Some system of prioritization is essential to identify the projects that will deliver the most value to customers and the business. This is where RICE scoring can help.
The RICE scoring framework offers product managers a systematic method to score and rank potential projects to decide what should ultimately be built. RICE assesses initiatives based on four key factors – Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. In this article, we’ll take a comprehensive look at the RICE scoring model to help you utilize it for prioritizing your product roadmap.
What is RICE?
RICE is an acronym that stands for:
- Reach – The number of customers or users that will be affected by the initiative.
- Impact – The value that will be created such as revenue, cost savings, and efficiency gains.
- Confidence – The level of certainty in achieving the expected outcome.
- Effort – The amount of work required to deliver the initiative.
With the RICE scoring methodology, each potential product idea or initiative is scored on a scale of 1-5 or 1-10 for each of the RICE factors. The individual factor scores are then multiplied to compute an overall score for the initiative.
The result is a systematic, quantitative approach to comparing and ranking competing product ideas. Those with the highest overall RICE scores should be prioritized on the roadmap over those with lower scores. Over time, the RICE framework provides a consistent, structured process for making product decisions and building roadmaps focused on driving maximum business value.
Scoring Reach
The first factor assessed by RICE is Reach – how many customers or users will be impacted by this initiative? To score Reach:
- Estimate what portion of your total customer or user base will be affected.
- Consider whether the initiative addresses a core functionality used by most customers or a niche feature for a smaller segment.
- Leverage any available data on customer segments and usage to quantify reach.
- Score higher for initiatives with a broader reach and lower for niche features.
- For example, a core performance improvement could warrant a Reach score of 8/10, while a specialty feature may only score 2/10.
- Keep scores relative to the size of your business – a reach of 10k users may warrant a 5/10 in one context or 2/10 in another.
Accurately projecting and scoring reach ensures you prioritize ideas with the greatest breadth of impact across your customer base.
Scoring Impact
Impact measures the expected business value of the initiative. To score potential Impact:
- Estimate the revenue, cost savings, efficiency gains, or other benefits each initiative is projected to deliver.
- Consider impacts like increased customer lifetime value, lower churn, greater customer satisfaction, and operational improvements.
- Request data from other teams to quantify anticipated impacts where possible.
- For revenue projects, model out expected monetary gains based on customer segments affected.
- Score higher for bigger potential dollar or percentage impacts to the business.
- Context matters – a $50k impact could be a 7/10 for one product or a 2/10 for another.
- Factor estimated probabilities into impact scores to account for uncertainty.
Scoring impact focuses roadmap prioritization on delivering tangible business results.
Scoring Confidence
The Confidence score represents the level of certainty you have in achieving the projected Reach and Impact. To rate Confidence:
- Consider how reliable the data is underlying Reach and Impact projections.
- Factor in potential variability in market conditions or customer demand.
- Account for unknowns and risks that could affect the outcomes.
- Reduce scores if the initiative is based on assumptions versus historical data.
- Consider your team’s experience and capability to execute the project.
- Assign higher Confidence scores to initiatives you can cleanly quantify and predict.
- Use lower Confidence scores for disruptive or innovative products with less predictability.
- Aim to raise Confidence over time by prototyping and validating assumptions.
Scoring Confidence prevents overprioritizing ideas that seem appealing but have highly uncertain outcomes.
Scoring Effort
Effort measures the level of resources required to deliver an initiative, such as:
- Engineering and design work needed for development.
- Content, testing, and quality assurance efforts.
- Requirements for marketing, sales enablement, or partnerships.
- Ongoing maintenance considerations post-launch.
- Benchmark against other projects and leverage estimates from your team.
- Score simple, straightforward enhancements lower on Effort.
- Assign higher Effort scores to complex projects with dependencies.
- Context matters – a score of 5 may represent 500 engineering hours for one product and 50 hours for another.
- Weigh Effort relative to your team’s available bandwidth.
Scoring Effort helps maximize return on your team’s time by elevating projects that provide substantial value for reasonable work.
Calculating Overall RICE Scores
Once you have scored an initiative on each of the RICE factors, multiply those scores together to get an overall RICE score.
For example, if a proposed feature is scored as:
| Reach: | 8 |
| Impact: | 7 |
| Confidence: | 6 |
| Effort: | 4 |
The overall RICE score would be:
8 x 7 x 6 ÷ 4 = 84
Tips for overall scoring:
- Use a spreadsheet to track RICE scoring across initiatives.
- Sort features based on the overall score to create a priority ranking.
- Updates scores as projections and assumptions are refined over time.
- Focus on ideas with the best combined Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort.
Regularly reevaluating and updating RICE scores enables you to dynamically reprioritize as new initiatives emerge.
RICE Scoring: Conclusion
Prioritizing product initiatives is a key component of building high-value roadmaps. The RICE framework empowers product managers to consistently evaluate and compare product ideas across four important dimensions – Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort.
Leveraging RICE scoring allows you to cut through opinions and assumptions. It drives data-based decisions, aligned on quantitative indicators of what will maximize results for your customers and business.
By implementing RICE into your planning processes, you can create focused roadmaps of initiatives that get the right features to market. The model’s simple but structured approach helps unify stakeholders around priorities that will deliver the greatest possible impact.
Try applying RICE scoring on your next roadmapping or backlog session to elevate the initiatives truly poised to drive revenue, engagement, and customer satisfaction. Using the scoring framework will lead to products that provide strong returns – prioritizing the right features for the right reasons.
