RICE Scoring: How to Decide What to Build Next

Intercom's product team created RICE because they were drowning in feature requests. Every customer had a "critical" need. Every team member had a "game-changing" idea. They needed a way to compare apples to oranges — objectively.

RICE scores four things: Reach (how many people will this affect?), Impact (how much will it change things for each person?), Confidence (how sure are you about the numbers?), and Effort (how much work is it?). You multiply Reach × Impact × Confidence, then divide by Effort. Highest score wins.

A SaaS founder we worked with had a backlog of 47 feature requests. She was paralyzed. We scored them all with RICE in about two hours. The winner wasn't the flashy AI feature everyone was asking for. It was a simple "duplicate invoice" button that would save every user 3 minutes per invoice. High reach, moderate impact, high confidence, tiny effort. She shipped it in a day. Support tickets dropped 30% that week.

Why this matters to you

Without a prioritization framework, you build based on whoever is loudest — the biggest customer, the most persistent teammate, your own gut feeling. RICE replaces politics with math. It doesn't make decisions for you, but it makes sure you're comparing options fairly.

For small teams especially, prioritization is survival. You can only build one thing at a time. Picking the wrong thing costs you a week or a month you can't get back. RICE cuts the debate short and gets you building faster.

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