🤖 AI RICE Prioritisation Calculator

Deciding which ideas or features to prioritise can be tough, especially when everything feels important. The RICE scoring method—considering Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort—helps you prioritise in a more structured way.

But calculating these scores manually can take time and lead to bias. This is where the AI RICE calculator automates this process, giving you a more objective, data-driven approach. This way, you can focus on what will truly make a difference for your product or project.

What Is an AI RICE Prioritisation Calculator?

AI RICE Prioritisation Calculator is a tool that helps you prioritise product features based on the RICE framework, but with the added intelligence of AI to automate and optimise the process.

RICE stands for Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort—four key factors that product teams use to score features and determine which ones to focus on.

Instead of manually calculating RICE scores, this AI tool automates the process by analysing real-time data like customer reach, potential impact on users, the confidence level in your assumptions, and the effort required to develop the feature. It then assigns scores to each feature based on these factors, giving you a clear priority list.

How Does an AI RICE Prioritisation Calculator Work?

AI RICE prioritisation calculator automates the calculation process, making it quicker and more efficient to prioritise projects based on data rather than gut feeling.

Let’s go through the process of how an AI RICE prioritisation calculator works using input, processing, and output.

Input

The first step in using the AI RICE calculator is entering details about the task or project you’re considering. These inputs are crucial for the tool to generate meaningful results.

Here’s what the input typically includes:

• Task or Project Description: You provide a brief summary of the task you’re trying to evaluate. This can be anything from improving a checkout flow to launching a new feature. The more specific you are, the better the AI can help you evaluate its importance.
• Target Audience: You define who will benefit from this task, like existing customers, new users, or internal teams. This helps the AI understand who will be impacted by the project and factor it into the prioritisation.
• Reach: You estimate how many people the task will affect within a specific timeframe. Reach can be defined by the number of users or customers that will experience the improvement, like “Less than 100 people” or “500+ people.”
• Impact: Here, you provide an estimate of how much each person affected by the project will benefit. Impact is usually rated on a scale from "Very low" to "Very high." For example, a small UI change might have a low impact, while improving your core product functionality could have a high impact.
• Confidence: This field asks you to rate how confident you are about the estimates for reach and impact. If you're sure about your estimates, you might choose "High," but if you’re uncertain, you can select "Low (just a guess)."
• Effort: Finally, you estimate how much time or resources it will take to complete the task. Effort is usually expressed in hours, days, or weeks, like “Just a day or two” or “Several weeks.” This helps the AI understand how resource-intensive the task will be.

These inputs give the AI the necessary information to process and calculate a RICE score, which helps prioritise the tasks.

Processing

Once the inputs are provided, the AI starts processing the information based on the RICE formula. The formula is:

RICE Score = (Reach x Impact x Confidence) / Effort

Here’s how the AI uses this formula to process the input:

• Multiplying Reach, Impact, and Confidence: The AI calculates the overall value of the project by multiplying the number of people affected (Reach), the benefit per person (Impact), and how sure you are about your estimates (Confidence). The higher the product of these three factors, the more valuable the project is considered.
• Dividing by Effort: The AI then divides the value by the effort required to complete the project. Projects that offer a lot of value but take little effort to implement will score higher. On the other hand, tasks that require a lot of effort but don’t deliver much value will score lower.
• Adjusting for Uncertainty: If you’ve rated your confidence as low, the AI factors in that uncertainty, lowering the overall score slightly to reflect the potential risk. If your confidence is high, the AI will give a higher weight to your reach and impact estimates.
• Cross-Comparing Projects: If you’re evaluating multiple tasks, the AI compares their RICE scores to help you prioritise the ones with the highest value for the least amount of effort.

By running these calculations, the AI helps you focus on high-impact tasks that require less time and effort, ensuring your team is working on the most valuable projects.

Output

After processing the input, the AI generates a prioritised list of tasks or projects based on their RICE scores. This output gives you a clear roadmap of where to allocate your resources and attention.

• RICE Score: Each task or project receives a RICE score that quantifies its priority level. Higher scores indicate tasks that will have a big impact and are relatively easy to implement, while lower scores suggest tasks that might be less critical or resource-heavy.
• Prioritised List: The AI provides you with a ranked list of tasks, from highest priority to lowest. This makes it easy to see which tasks should be worked on first and which can wait.
• Actionable Insights: The tool might also provide insights on how to approach the tasks with lower RICE scores, such as breaking them down into smaller, more manageable parts or reconsidering their importance.
• Resource Planning: In addition to prioritisation, the AI might suggest which tasks are feasible given your current resources and timelines, helping you plan sprints or allocate team members effectively.

By turning your inputs into a clear, data-driven ranking, it helps you make better decisions about where to focus your efforts, ensuring you work on the most impactful projects first.

How to Calculate Your RICE Score Using AI RICE Prioritisation Calculator?

The AI RICE Prioritisation Calculator simplifies simplifies the whole process by guiding you through each factor and calculating the RICE score automatically. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to use this tool:

1. Define the Task or Project

The first step is to clearly state the task or project you're considering. This could be anything from improving a website feature to launching a new marketing campaign. Be specific about what you are trying to achieve.

For example:

• Are you improving a user interface?
• Launching a new product feature?
• Running a customer survey?

Clearly defining the task helps the AI understand what you're working on and ensures that the following calculations are based on a well-defined scope.

A well-defined task sets the foundation for evaluating its potential reach, impact, and the resources required. It keeps the prioritisation process focused on specific goals.

2. Identify Your Target Audience

Next, you'll specify the target audience for the task. Who will be affected by this project? This could be existing customers, potential users, or internal teams.

Think about:

• Who will benefit from the changes or new features?
• Are you targeting a small, niche group or a large user base?

Defining your audience is crucial because it helps the AI estimate the Reach—the number of people who will be affected by the task.

Knowing the target audience helps determine how far-reaching the task is, which is a key factor in calculating its RICE score.

3. Estimate How Many People Will Be Affected (Reach)

The Reach factor measures how many people the task or project will impact within a given time frame. For example, if you're improving a feature on a website that gets 10,000 monthly visitors, the Reach would be based on how many of those visitors will experience the improvement.

Estimate the number of people who will be affected, whether it's:

• Less than 100 users.
• Hundreds, thousands, or more.

This helps determine the scale of the project’s effect.

Reach is a critical factor in RICE scoring. The higher the number of people affected, the higher the Reach, which can boost the priority of the task if it has significant impact.

4. Evaluate the Impact of the Task

Next, you'll estimate the Impact of the task. This measures how much the task will improve the experience for each person affected. It's a subjective measure, but you should consider the potential outcomes of completing the task.

The AI tool will give you options to rate the impact, ranging from "Very Low" to "Very High":

• Very Low: Minor improvement for users.
• Low: Small but noticeable change.
• Medium: Significant improvement for many users.
• High: Major improvement that will dramatically change the user experience.

Impact shows the significance of the task. A task that affects a small number of users but has a high impact may be just as important as a task with a large reach but low impact. Balancing reach and impact helps determine where to allocate resources.

5. Determine How Confident You Are in the Estimates (Confidence)

In this step, you'll indicate how confident you are in your estimates for Reach and Impact. Confidence is a measure of how certain you are that the project will deliver the predicted benefits.

Select one of the following levels of confidence:

• Low (Just a guess): You’re not sure if the project will have the intended impact or reach.
• Medium: You have some evidence or data but aren't 100% certain.
• High: You're confident in your estimates based on solid data or previous experience.

Confidence helps adjust the RICE score to account for uncertainty. Even if a task has high reach and impact, if you’re unsure about the estimates, the score will reflect that uncertainty, potentially lowering the priority.

6. Estimate the Time or Resources Required (Effort)

Effort is the final factor in calculating the RICE score. It measures how much time, money, or resources will be needed to complete the task. Effort is typically estimated in terms of person-hours, days, or weeks, depending on the scope of the project.

Think about:

• How long will the task take to complete?
• How many people will be involved?
• Will it require significant resources or tools?

The AI tool will ask you to provide an estimate of the time or resources needed, such as a few hours, several weeks, or more. Lower effort scores lead to higher overall RICE scores because tasks that require fewer resources are often prioritised.

Effort directly affects prioritisation. Even a task with high reach and impact might not be a top priority if it requires a large amount of time or resources. The RICE score balances high-impact, high-effort tasks with quick wins that can be completed with fewer resources.

7. Click Generate to Calculate the RICE Score

Once you’ve filled out the necessary fields—defining the task, audience, reach, impact, confidence, and effort—click “Generate.” The AI will automatically calculate the RICE score, which helps you prioritise the task based on its overall importance and feasibility.

After generating the RICE score, you can compare it with other tasks or projects and decide which should take priority. The higher the RICE score, the more impactful and efficient the task is likely to be.