Naming it is a reminder that RICE compares initiatives against each other, it doesn't score one in isolation.
How many people or customers this initiative will reach in a given time period, e.g. per quarter.
e.g. website visitors, trial signups, or accounts, pick one unit and use it consistently across every initiative you compare.
The impact on each person reached, on RICE's fixed scale. The number in brackets is what the calculation actually uses.
How confident you are in the reach, impact and effort estimates.
The total effort required across design, development, testing and delivery, measured in person-months. One person working full-time for a month is 1 person-month, so multiply the number of people by the number of months involved to get the total. For example, 0.5 is roughly two weeks of one person's time, 1 is one person for a month, and 3 could be three people working for a month.
RICE Score
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Enter Reach and Effort, and select Impact and Confidence, to see a score.
Using this tool
When RICE helps, and where it stops
When to use RICE
- Comparing validated initiatives
- Supporting roadmap prioritisation
- Facilitating stakeholder discussions
When not to rely on RICE alone
- Defining product strategy
- Making investment decisions in isolation
- Prioritising without discovery or customer evidence
RICE is Intercom's original formula, developed internally by their product team and now the industry-standard reference for this method. It supports a prioritisation conversation, it doesn't replace the judgement of the person having it.