New ideas can come for a product from partners, engineers, competitors, marketing and sales personnel & clients could inspire product and service ideas. It takes work for a product manager to identify the most beneficial ideas for business. To overcome these difficulties, the RICE framework is the best way that helps product managers determine the features, products, and other initiatives ideas.
Table of Contents
What Is RICE framework?
The abbreviation RICE stands for Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Efforts. RICE framework is a simple and best prioritization framework for quantifying project ideas, features, potential values, and initiatives. When a product manager has to decide the order they should work, RICE framework helps estimate the value of project ideas and features, making them easy to sort.
There are many initiatives a product manager has to work on at any time. What to work on first is the main issue of prioritization. The RICE framework is the finest way for a product manager to standardize this process.
Use the formula to evaluate the products by scoring across four factors:
RICE SCORE = REACH x IMPACT x CONFIDENCE / EFFORT
Four scoring factors of RICE framework
Reach
This factor helps track the number of customers reaching your initiative within a given timeframe. Reach allows deciding what type of customers you have to reach and how long it would take to impact. Choose a period like a quarter, a month, etc., then decide what reach refers to, such as the free-trial signup, number of user transactions, and number of existing users. The estimated number will be the reach score. For Example, if a project is expected to lead to 100 new users within a month, the reach score will be 100.
Impact
Impact can show how much an initiative or new feature will affect an individual. It could reflect on a point below
● Quantitative goal (How many people will get affected by an idea?)
● Qualitative goal (By how much will it affect the user?)
It ranks an initiative or idea by the quantity of influence on an object. It shows the contribution that a feature brings to a product. Quantify is challenging to impact precisely, so there are multiple-choice scales:
● 0.25 for minimum
● 0.5 for low
● 1 for medium
● 2 for high
● 3 for a huge effect
The above values are multiplied to get the final score, which may be up or down on the scale.
Confidence
This feature defines the confidence level about the accuracy of estimates and metrics. If there is a belief that an idea will have a significant impact but lacks data to back it up, it allows controlling this. There is a scale to determine the confidence score for an initiative:
● 100% = High Confidence
● 80% = Medium Confidence
● 50% = Low Confidence
A product manager has to enhance the rating accuracy and confidence score whenever there is a low confidence score. A high confidence score in the feature’s success should reflect a product manager’s confidence.
Effort
All the above factors represent the numerators in the RICE framework equation, but this factor represents the denominator. The three components are potential benefits, while this is the only score representing cost benefits. To quantify efforts, the typical way is to the number of individuals per month. For Example, if a project requires three people to work on it for a week will have an effort score of 3 person weeks.
CONCLUSION
For comparing difficult to comparing ideas, RICE can be beneficial. RICE framework helps make informed decisions and keeps the team and product manager on track. Once you get familiar with the RICE model, you can achieve many more benefits. It works well in fulfilling the needs of an organization. Make informed and better decisions about what and how to work with a prioritized framework. Prioritization is the best way to get the highest ROI and justify the investments. It makes you realistic about the effort required to achieve the goal. Switch to RICE for smooth development work and to build a roadmap because the more significant the RICE score is, the more value it will provide.