When Everything is on Fire: Set Priorities Like Intercom Managers

Prioritize your tasks using the RICE method.

 

Product development is closely related to process management, testing hypotheses and new ideas. All of this usually happens at once, and the deadline for implementing a new feature is “yesterday”. We talk about how the RICE method will help you set priorities for all tasks and control the backlog in our article.

What is the RICE method?

 

“Focus is the ability to say “no””

-Steve Jobs

In 1997, when Steve Jobs returned to Apple kuwait telephone number data it was going through bad times: sales dropped by 30%, and in one year the business suffered a loss of $1.5 billion, which was half of its value at the time. At that time, Steve Jobs  decided to keep only 30% of the brand’s assortment in the offer, and to withdraw the rest forever. The principle that he followed at that time, he would later call the “30% rule”.

When Jobs became Apple’s CEO, the company reduced its losses by $100 million and the following year recorded revenues of $309 million. The company, which no one predicted would be successful, rose like a phoenix.

This is another example of how well-placed priorities defined the success of the entire undertaking. Another example of a company that  created its own system for assessing the priorities of individual tasks is Intercom – a

technology company from Silicon Valley.

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The RICE method is based on a points system. The manager must objectively evaluate each idea or task in terms of each of the following elements:

  • R each – reach: how many customers’ experiences will be affected by the selected idea;
  • Impact : how the implementation of this idea will affect the quality of the product or service;
  • Confidence – confidence in how reach, impact and effort are being assessed;
  • E ffort – the effort necessary to implement the idea.

To obtain the number of points that correspond to each of the tasks according to the RICE method, the R, I and C indicators should be multiplied and divided by E – labor costs. As a result, we get a list of tasks, ordered by their importance, and we can move on to planning the implementation work. Let’s look at what each individual assessment consists of.

Reach

Both the team and the manager are always tempted to prioritize the tasks they enjoy most or implement features they would like to use themselves.

To avoid this, you need to understand how many customers will be affected by implementing each task on your list over the selected time period. At this stage what is conversion and why it is the most important thing in adwords it is best to work with real numbers, not estimates.

For example:

Task 1:  This feature will impact all customers we acquire this quarter. Reach = all customers who made a purchase this quarter.

Task 2:  This feature will have a one-time impact on 500 current customers, but will have no impact on product or loyalty in the long term. Reach = 500 customers per quarter.

Impact

Assess the impact of the tasks on your target audience or on the goals that the company sets for itself in the chosen period. Unlike the previous point phone database assessing the impact in an accurate way is quite difficult.

To estimate the impact of a task on users, you can use the following checklist. Let’s take the example of a new feature for a mobile app:

  • Will the new feature increase conversions – the number of purchases or sign-ups?
  • Will the new feature help you acquire new users – for example, retain them at the onboarding stage ?
  • Will a new feature (e.g. night mode or larger font) help increase the loyalty of existing users?
  • Does the new feature improve the product and give it a new competitive advantage?

Product managers at Intercom use a scale from 3 to 0.25, where 3 is very high impact, 2 is high impact, 1 is medium impact, 0.5 is low impact and 0.25 is negligible.

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