What are the pros and cons of using the RICE framework for roadmap prioritization?

By utilizing the RICE framework, teams can make more informed decisions by considering both the potential value (Reach, Impact) and the feasibility (Confidence, Effort) of initiatives. It provides a structured and transparent way to prioritize and allocate resources to projects or features that are most likely to deliver the desired outcomes.

The RICE framework, an acronym for Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort, serves as a prioritization tool by calculating a prioritization score: Reach: Indicates the number of users affected by the app typically focusing on top-of-the-funnel users. Impact: Measures the magnitude of the project's effect, through new conversions, and qualitative objectives like enhancing customer delight. Ranges from 3 (massive) to 0.25 (minimum impact). Confidence: Reflects degree of confidence in the success of the project. 100% (high), 80% (medium), 50% (low confidence). Effort: Estimates the total resources, including product, design, engineering, testing, etc., required to complete the initiative over a specified period RICE score = (R * I * C)/E

I have used RICE at several companies ranging from pre-seed startups through multi-national corporations. In experience, it is the single best methodology to remove subjectivity from the prioritization process. If your organization or company suffers from prioritization-by-loudest-voice-in-the-room, this is a simple way to overcome those obstacles.

Imagine you are a product manager and in front, you have multiple new product features, and initiatives. You have demands from leadership to work on some features and implement them as soon as possible. What will you do as a product manager, do you go with what the leadership team says? In this situation we cannot work with any given feature, you have to understand how important each feature is and what impact it will have on your users and customers. We cannot simply assume that out of many, any one feature will create impact or create value for them, so we need to have a clear prioritization here. We use the RICE framework. Based on the scores we can decide on which product, feature, or initiatives to work on in the product roadmap.

I have a big issue with RICE and some other prioritization methods: Besides impact and the many-times hard to estimate effort, there can be other factors worth taking into account like the risk of not doing and innovation. Furthermore, when many tasks are low confidence RICE becomes shooting in the dark with major budget burning risks. On my profile, I have a model for that called 'LIMES RoaD' which I recommend having a look at :) feel free to DM me if you don't find it ??

RICE does not directly account for human resources versus capital resources. Given the current economic environment, organizations may need to add weighting based on their tech capacity versus the ability to use cash for delivering products or features. Just like various Agile processes, these tools should be modified to fit your particular situation and needs. They are not a one size fits all.

While the RICE framework provides a useful methodology for prioritizing features or initiatives based on quantitative metrics, it may not capture all relevant aspects, such as qualitative considerations, customer feedback, or market trends. It is important to supplement the RICE framework with other methods to gather a comprehensive view.

RICE framework does help in the prioritization but it misses on some aspects like the scores of factors are subjective and are not derived using clear formulas quantitatively. Estimating the efforts can be sometimes challenging. The framework does not consider any dependencies while in general there are many dependencies attached to launching a product or working on product features. So while using the RICE framework we need to consider these challenges or drawbacks.

I love the Kano model as it focuses on customer satisfaction! Categorizing features or attributes into three categories: Basic, Performance, and Excitement helps identify and prioritize features that are essential for meeting customer expectations, as well as features that can provide delight and differentiate the product in the market.

I like to further simplify RICE and instead have risk adjusted impact vs cost. Define a single metric and time frame to assess the initiatives, do very rough back of the envelope math (typically as simple as volume x conversion lift). This gives you both a more objective and comparable "order of magnitude" impact, as well as clarity on the key drivers for impact to focus the project on. Over time, you start building a portfolio of initiatives that can benchmark the kind of lift you can get per driver, and often the volume input is fairly knowable from the beginning. Then multiply by your confidence %, and you get risk adjusted impact for each initiative.

The good news is that there are a variety of prioritization frameworks. The bad new is that there are a variety of prioritization frameworks. It's critical to understand what's needed for the product, which decision-making process works best for the organization, and which framework promotes collaboration, contributes to strategic goals, and helps the team focus on value-add ideas. The prioritization framework chosen facilitates, but doesn't replace, the team's decision-making process.

I'm not sure RICE is equivalent to Kano or Moscow. The three seem to be useful for prioritization, but Kano or Moscow don't consider reach or confidence. Reach should be defined or measured in similar ways as in business design TAM, SAM and SOM are defined. Reach is a very important dimension of a given value proposition. Confidence is useful as a score of the stability or not of a given set of assumptions. Any scoring system viable to measure reach (what kind of market, how many and how realistically addressable), impact (how much the target can be impacted by the solution), confidence (how much or not are we sure about our hypothesis) and effort (how hard is either develop the technology or to move forward adoption) can be alterntives.