Understanding Idea Scoring & Factors

Understanding Scoring in Ideas

Scoring ideas based on a standard criteria or set of factors allows your team to be able to easily align on which ideas would require the most attention and urgency, while being able to quickly locate high-priority ideas with ease. In Roadmunk, items can be scored using one of two criteria sets: Value vs. Effort and R.I.C.E. (Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort).

These scoring models help Roadmunk users to better prioritize their ideas, and generate better visibility into which direction their feedback is driving them. In this article, we'll discuss the how positive and negative factors can impact your idea's calculated score and explore both of the scoring criteria available through Roadmunk.

Calculating Score with Value vs. Effort

A popular, easy-to-communicate way to begin prioritizing ideas is to compare the value gained from an idea against the effort required to complete it. By using a standard ranking scale from 1 to 5 as opposed to specific dollar values or overly granular estimations, decisions can be made quickly and easily by a product manager or team in order to get the prioritization process started smoothly. 

In Roadmunk's Ideas module, we provide users with the ability to calculate a Value vs. Effort score so that sorting can happen easily and your highest value, lowest effort home runs will naturally float to the top. This score is calculated by simply dividing the value rating by the effort rating. 

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As a product manager, you have limited resources and people to work with to create value, so you want to constantly optimize how those people and resources are being used to create value for your organization. This prioritization view lets you visualize and communicate this quickly and easily.

Calculating Score with R.I.C.E.

The R.I.C.E. framework, popularized by Intercom, gives a more detailed look at how ideas may impact goals. R.I.C.E. stands for the 4 factors that are used in this model: Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort.

• Reach is a numerical value that represents how many people will be affected by a feature in a given length of time, e.g. customers per quarter

• Impact is a rating to estimate how much an idea may affect these people, on a scale of .25, .5, 1, 2, 3. In Roadmunk, this is currently represented as a scale from 1 to 5.

• Confidence is a % value to represent how confident you are that the other ratings are accurate, which is helpful to balance out exciting ideas that haven’t been fleshed out yet. This is a % score represented in Roadmunk with a Harvey ball with possible values of 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%.

• Effort is a measure of how much time and people are required to implement this idea. Typically represented as a numerical value for number of people per month of work, in Roadmunk this is represented as a scale from 1 to 5.

Then, based on these factors, a R.I.C.E. score is calculated by multiplying Reach by Impact by Confidence and dividing by Effort. This results in an overall score which represents the “impact per time worked” on your ideas, appropriately dampened by their respective Confidence values. This score is often seen as being more detailed than Value vs. Effort, and encourages firming up research and confidence before prioritizing ideas that are flashy and exciting.

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As a product manager, prioritizing your ideas in a rigorous, consistent way is important. The R.I.C.E. framework allows you to balance estimated impact versus how much work is required, and also surface confidence levels in the estimations. This helps to boost surer “bets” to float to the top of your prioritization, and encourages ample research before committing to a new idea.

Calculating Score with Custom Prioritization Views

As the need for greater visibility into the decision making process grows, teams will often adopt a prioritization framework which uniquely suits their team's use case. In order to provide greater flexibility and alignment with your internal team's existing frameworks, custom or otherwise, Roadmunk's Ideas module allows users to generate Custom Idea Prioritization Views. 

Within these custom views, your team is able to determine which factors (either existing or custom) contribute to the overall score for your idea. These can also be used for comparison purposes by creating multiple prioritization views, as factor scores are consistent across all of your prioritization views. For more details on setting up custom views and factors, make sure to check out our article on Customizing your Idea Views & Factors.