RICE: Simple prioritization for product managers

Prioritization is a perennial challenge when building a product roadmap. How do you decide what to work on first?

If you’ve put the effort into brainstorming new ideas, finding opportunities for improvement, and collecting feedback, you’ll have a solid product roadmap full of good ideas. But the order in which you tackle those ideas deserves just as much thought. You need to take the time to prioritize well.

Prioritization is a difficult problem

So why is prioritizing a product roadmap so difficult? Let me count the ways:

• It’s satisfying to work on pet ideas you’d use yourself, instead of projects with broad reach.
• It’s tempting to focus on clever ideas, instead of projects that directly impact your goals.
• It’s exciting to dive into new ideas, instead of projects that you’re already confident about.
• It’s easy to discount the additional effort that one project will require over another.

Even if you make it through this mental minefield intact, you’re left with the tough task of consistently combining and comparing these factors across all project ideas. Thankfully, you don’t have to do this in your head.