TL;DR
Differentiating great product features from the merely good doesn’t require invention of new frameworks, lucky guesses, or divine intervention. It does require standardization and consistent application of a method for identifying the value of any given thing, so that you can confidently say “Yes!” to the great ideas, while deferring less valuable ideas and eliminating others which may be distractions.
3Protocols prefers the RICE Framework for prioritizing product deliverables because it is simple, repeatable, scalable, and objective.
The Problem
Your product has bugs, a backlog of feature enhancement requests, technical debt to pay off, you had a great shower thought this morning. Then, an RFP from a potential enterprise customer has just landed on your desk – did it identify product gaps? You bet it did.
Let’s learn about a method for filtering all of this input so that you can confidently say “Yes!” to the great ideas, while deferring less valuable ideas and eliminating others which may be distractions.
Choosing the right method for determining what does and does not go onto your product roadmap doesn’t require invention of new methods of thinking. But that thinking does need to be consistent, objective, and repeatable.
Solving the Problem with the RICE Framework for Product Prioritization
The RICE Framework requires us to rank the following characteristics of each potential product deliverable: Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. Once you’ve assessed each of these factors, you apply a formula to produce a quantifiable RICE Score.
RICE offers a simple and repeatable method prioritzing potential product deliverables. In order to achieve this though, the team must agree on how each category is scored.
- Reach - How many customers or users will be impacted by this deliverable? (e.g. 1, 10, 10,000, etc.)
- Impact - To what degree will this deliverable impact a higher-level goal, such as Increase conversion rate, Improve Net Promotor Score®, Expand to new markets, or Win enterprise customers? Your goals may vary, but they ought to be measurable and understandable. (e.g. 3x, 2x, 1x, 0.5x, 0.25x)
- Confidence - How confident are we about our assessment of this deliverable’s Reach and Impact? Scored as a percentage (100%, 90%, 80%, etc.)
- Effort - How much effort will it take to implement the feature, typically measured in person-months. This is not intended to be a precise measurement. A ballpark figure is sufficient.
The formula for RICE is:
RICE Score = (Reach x Impact x Confidence) / Effort
Consider the following example for a product that is undergoing a redesign, wants to expand to enterprise customers, but requires existing customers to remain happy, so that they’ll refer new customers.
| Deliverable | Reach | Impact | Confidence | Effort | RICE Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Redesign Login Screen | 1500 | 1x | 90% | 3 | 450 |
| Fix Dashboard Filtering Bug | 800 | 2x | 80% | 2 | 640 |
| Add New Enterprise Feature | 1,000 | 2x | 70% | 10 | 140 |
| Add the Whimsical Shower Thought | 1500 | 0.25x | 50% | 5 | 67.5 |
Evaluating each of the RICE Scores helps us objectively prioritize stability of existing features that customers use (that’s a strong “Yes!”). After that, we’ll finish the redesign work that we’ve started. Only after that will we add new features that an enterprise customer added that we think may be beneficial to other customers. Our Whimsical Shower Thought that we think might impact every one of our customers, turns out to be a distraction.
When prioritization of your potential product deliverables is based on objective analysis rather than personal intuition, you can confidently say “No” to poor ideas or distractions while more clearly communicating to customers and stakeholders the value in what you’ve built and what you’re going to build.