Prioritization in product management is the disciplined process of evaluating the relative importance of work, ideas, and requests to eliminate wasteful practices and deliver customer value in the quickest possible way, given a variety of constraints.
Formulas provide a single number with flexible calculations that allow product makers and stakeholders to decide the most valuable feature to build next and sort their backlog based on that metric.
In this article, we demonstrate how to create the most popular prioritization formulas used by product managers. For information on creating your own prioritization formulas, see the article Create your own prioritization formulas.
In this article:
The RICE Framework
The RICE framework is a straightforward scoring system developed by the brilliant product management team at Intercom.
RICE stands for the four factors that Intercom uses to evaluate product ideas.
- Reach - How many people will be affected by that feature in a given time?
- Impact - Intercom scores the impact of a specific feature on an individual person level on a scale from 0.5 to 3.
- Confidence - How confident we are that this initiative will prove our hypothesis and deliver the desired results
- Effort - The total amount of time a feature will require from all team members.
In older versions of Productboard, RICE was included as a default formula. If you want to create your own version from scratch, follow the steps below.
Step 1: Create custom fields
You will need these fields to build this formula:
- Custom number field: Reach
- Custom number field: Impact
- Custom number field: Confidence
- Custom number field: Effort
If you don't already have these fields, you'll need to create them. See Add custom fields to your boards for details.
Step 2: Create the formula
Once you have the required fields, it's time to add them to a formula. You can create a new formula from the Formulas page in the Data section in the Main menu. See Create your own prioritization formulas for details.
Your formula should look something like this:
(Reach x Impact x Confidence) / Effort
If everything's working, you'll see a green checkmark and "Formula is saved" appear in the formula editor, meaning you can safely close the formula panel.
Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF)
Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) is a prioritization model used to sequence jobs (eg., Features and Capabilities). In the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), WSJF is a prioritization model used to prioritize features by calculating the Cost of Delay (COD) divided by job size to produce maximum economic value.
This framework helps you decide what to put on your product roadmap.
To create this formula follow the steps below.
Step 1: Create custom fields
You will need these fields to build this formula:
- Custom number field: Business value
- Custom number field: Time criticality
- Custom number field: Risk reduction
- Custom number field: Estimate size
If you don't already have these fields, you'll need to create them. See Add custom fields to your boards for details.
Step 2: Create the formula
Once you have the required fields, it's time to add them to a formula. You can create a new formula from the Formulas page in the Data section in the Main menu. See Create your own prioritization formulas for details.
Your formula should look something like this:
(Business value + Time criticality + Risk reduction) / Estimate size
If everything's working, you'll see a green checkmark and "Formula is saved" appear in the formula editor, meaning you can safely close the formula panel.
ICE Scoring Model
If you’re looking for a speedy prioritization framework, ICE is even more straightforward than RICE.
It’s an excellent starting point if you’re just getting into the habit of prioritizing product initiatives, but it lacks the data-informed objectivity of the rest of the frameworks in this guide.
ICE is an acronym for:
- Impact – how impactful do we expect this initiative to be?
- Confidence – how confident we are that this initiative will prove our hypothesis and deliver the desired results?
- Ease – how easy is this initiative to build and implement? What are the costs of the resources that are going to be needed?
Each of these factors is scored from 1–10, and the total average number is the ICE score.
To create this formula follow the steps below.
Step 1: Create custom fields
You will need these fields to build this formula:
- Custom number field: Impact
- Custom number field: Confidence
- Custom number field: Ease
If you don't already have these fields, you'll need to create them. See Add custom fields to your boards for details.
Step 2: Create the formula
Once you have the required fields, it's time to add them to a formula. You can create a new formula from the Formulas page in the Data section in the Main menu. See Create your own prioritization formulas for details.
Your formula should look something like this:
Impact x Confidence x Ease
If everything's working, you'll see a green checkmark and "Formula is saved" appear in the formula editor, meaning you can safely close the formula panel.
Value for effort
To make this framework work, the team must quantify the value and complexity of each feature, update, fix, or product initiative.
- Value is the benefit your customers and business get from the feature. Will the feature alleviate any customers’ pains, improve their day-to-day workflow, and help them achieve the desired outcome? Also, will the feature have a positive impact on the bottom line of your business?
- Effort is what it takes for your organization to deliver this feature. It’s not enough that we create a feature that our customers love. The feature or product must also work for our business. Can you afford the cost of building and provisioning the feature? Operational costs, development time, skills, training, technology, and infrastructure costs are just some of the categories you must consider when estimating complexity.
If you can get more value with fewer efforts, that’s a feature you should prioritize.
To create this formula follow the steps below.
Step 1: Create custom fields
You will need these fields to build this formula:
- Custom number field: Value
- Custom number field: Effort OR Default field: Effort
If you don't already have these fields, you'll need to create them. See Add custom fields to your boards for details.
Note: If you're already using the default Effort field as part of an integration with Jira, ADO, or some other project management tool, you may want to use a custom number field for this formula to avoid overwriting important data.
Step 2: Create the formula
Once you have the required fields, it's time to add them to a formula. You can create a new formula from the Formulas page in the Data section in the Main menu. See Create your own prioritization formulas for details.
Your formula should look something like this:
Value / Effort
If everything's working, you'll see a green checkmark and "Formula is saved" appear in the formula editor, meaning you can safely close the formula panel.
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