Prioritization: RICE and impact vs effort

A defensible pick isn’t the one you like — it’s the one whose criteria you wrote down before you chose.

The idea

When three good features compete for one quarter, gut feel doesn’t travel. Scoring does. RICE puts four honest estimates in a line — how many people it touches (Reach), how much it moves them (Impact), how sure you are (Confidence), and what it costs (Effort) — and lets the ranking fall out of the numbers.

The point isn’t the exact score. It’s that you showed your criteria before your choice, and can say out loud which single assumption would flip the decision. That last sentence is what separates a senior answer from a confident guess.

How it works

RICE is one division. The three “good” numbers multiply on top; the one “bad” number divides underneath:

RICE = (Reach × Impact × Confidence) ÷ Effort

Impact scale (standard):  massive 3 · high 2 · medium 1 · low 0.5 · minimal 0.25
Confidence:  a percentage on your evidence (100% = measured, 50% = a hunch)
Reach:  people or events affected in one period  ·  Effort:  person-months

Price alerts    8000 × 2 × 0.80 ÷ 2 = 6400
Flexible dates  5000 × 3 × 0.50 ÷ 4 = 1875
Group booking   2000 × 1 × 1.00 ÷ 3 =  667

Ranking: price alerts > flexible dates > group booking

Keep the units consistent (Reach and Effort on the same time base) or the ratio is nonsense. Then don’t stop at the number — ask which input is softest. Here it is flexible dates’ 50% confidence and price alerts’ 80%: those are estimates, and the grid view lets you feel how the order shifts when you touch them.

When to use it

Watch out for

• Mismatched units. Reach “per year” over Effort “per week” produces a confident, meaningless number. Fix the time base first.
• Effort in the denominator plays tricks. A 0.25-month task looks enormous just because you divided by a small number. Floor your effort estimates and eyeball the top pick.
• Confidence as a fudge factor. Nudging your favorite from 50% to 90% “because we believe in it” games the framework. Confidence tracks evidence, not enthusiasm.
• Big-reach, low-impact wins. A feature that lightly touches everyone can out-score one that transforms a few. Sanity-check whether the leader actually matters.
• Treating the score as the decision. RICE ranks; it doesn’t decide. Name the assumption that would flip it — that’s the real deliverable.

Worked example

An interviewer asks: “A travel-booking team has three features and room for one. Which ships?” A strong answer scores them out loud, then defends the pick. Price alerts wins, 6400 to 1875, because it reaches many users at high impact for little effort. But the honest close is the sensitivity: “My lead rests on price alerts’ 80% confidence — the softest number. If a quick experiment showed real confidence below roughly 23%, flexible dates would overtake it. So before I commit the quarter, I’d spend a week validating that estimate.” Stating the flip condition — not just the winner — is what lands.