The RICE framework: A Product Managers go to tool

Prioritizing the Product Backlog is one important function of the Product Manager. That’s because not only do you need to always ensure that you have the most important Product Use cases under your control, other stakeholders also have the right to question why certain product use cases are prioritized over others. When that happens, you can bring out the product backlog with a flourish, and everyone goes back satisfied. Well, the last bit does not happen in reality, but it’s worth a try.

While there are different technics for prioritizing a backlog, I usually follow the RICE framework. It is easily computed, intuitive, and explainable to all stakeholders.

The acronym stands for:

R= Reach – how many customers or customer groups will value the specific use case?

I=Impact – How valuable is the use case to the customer or customer group?

C = Confidence – How confident are you about the value of the use case? (I don’t like this factor)

E = Effort – The effort involved (mostly engineering) in building the use case

Each of the values can be score on a scale of 1 to 5. The Effort can be a T-shirt size (Fibonacci series) or man-days, or other value that comes from a high level estimate from Engineering team.

So,

RICE Score = (Reach x Impact x Confidence)/Effort

Simple enough. However, I don’t understand the Confidence Score very well. So I often ignore it.

Also, I think a key component that is missing from this is Innovation value/Competitive Score. Is the use case innovative enough to beat the competition? Also, is it complex enough to sustain the differentiation for a longish time?

So, I like to add the Innovation Score to the Equation for Modified RIICE:

RIICE Score = (Reach x Impact x Innovation x Confidence)/Effort

Hope this helps!