What is RICE prioritization?
RICE is a prioritization framework used by product managers to quickly identify what ideas, initiatives and/ or features to prioritize, which is an important part of the product management process. Core to the framework is the formula (Reach x Impact x Confidence) / Effort.
The components of the RICE formula
Reach: The number of people reached in a given timeframe
Impact: This can be either quantitative or qualitative goal on a 5 point system:
- 3 = massive impact
- 2 = high impact
- 1 = medium impact
- .5 = low impact
- .25 = minimal impact
Confidence: A measure of the certainty that an idea or feature will actually realize the impact. Confidence allows for some quality control on features and ideas with insufficient data.
- 100% = high confidence
- 80% = medium confidence
- *50% = low confidence
- *Anything below below 50%, is consider “moonshot” and assume your priorities need to be elsewhere.
Effort: An estimate of the amount of time required from all members of the product team.
How is RICE different from ICE prioritization?
The key difference between the RICE and ICE is the inclusion of Reach, more specifically, that REACH is separated out from IMPACT in RICE. This means that for teams that have good data on potential reach of new features, RICE can make more sense, whereas for teams that either lack good such data, or are keep to have a simple model and move fast, ICE can make more sense.
Note also that as Ease is a factor in ICE prioritization and Effort is a denominator in RICE prioritization, the Es of the two frameworks are inverted but still essentially the same.
