RICE Prioritization for Jira

How to start to prioritize with RICE

• Sign up in Prioneer. Click here to sign up

• In the “Home” view, click on the Button “Start a new ranking”. Select the RICE template. You can modify the criteria later.

• After you created the ranking, click on the button “Connect Jira”. Follow the instructions on the screen.

• The dialog will show you your Jira issues. Filter the Jira issues that you want to prioritize by entering a JQL query (e.g. project = ‘MOON’). If you want to prioritize all of your issues, leave the filter empty.

• Click “Continue”. You will be forwarded to the ranking and can start to prioritize.

Add or modify custom criteria

The default criteria are based on a RICE prioritization template. You can go to the prioritization settings to add or modify criteria. Click on the settings icon and go to the tab “Prioritization”. Here you can add, delete or change existing criteria.

If you delete a criterion, all saved values for that criterion will be deleted. Instead of deleting a criterion, you can disable it. Disabled criteria will not be shown in the table and not be used in the calculation for the final RICE score.

Apply custom weights

Go to the ranking settings to modify the formula that is used to calculate the priority score of an item.

You can apply custom weights by changing the formula and multiplying a criterion with a number.

Prioritize together - survey all relevant stakeholder

You can do the assessment of criteria on your own, or invite team members and stakeholders to do their individual assessments. Prioneer gives you the overall group result and also the individual results. Your team members can join anonymously or with their Google account.

If you don't like the stakeholders to be able to see the results, you can restrict their permissions in the settings.

Select Jira issues

If you want to change the Jira issues that can be prioritized, go to the settings. Click on the settings icon and go to the tab “JQL”. Here you can modify the Jira issues and see a preview based on the JQL that you enter.

Jira Synchronization

The Jira issues that you select for the RICE prioritization will be imported and kept in sync. If you change the JQL, existing assignments and scores of your issues that you made in Prioneer will stay saved. So if you re-add your issues, previously made scores will not be lost. If you delete a prioritization, all saved scores of that prioritization will be deleted.

What is the RICE prioritization framework?

The RICE prioritization framework is a framework that helps you to assess the expected value of a project, a software feature or an activity. It works by assigning a predefined set of scoring criteria to each project and then calculating a score for each project. The score represents the priority of a project.

To use RICE, you go through your list of projects and assign four scoring criteria to each project. The four scoring criteria that are used in RICE prioritization are: Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort. These scoring criteria are the input data for the priority score of a project.

If you prioritize using Prioneer, then the RICE criteria are already set up in the RICE template and you can start working with RICE criteria immediately.

Scoring criteria and possible values

Reach

How many users will gain value from this project.

Value range:

0 - X (User count)

For software projects you can use “monthly users”. If a project will benefit 100 users monthly, then it’s reach is 100. If your project will make new users use a feature, then you can estimate how many existing users will benefit and add the numbers of new user to it. E.g.: If 100 existing users benefit from the project and 20 new users will start to use a feature, then the reach is 120 users. If you want to start simple you can also use percentages for the share of users that benefit from the feature. E.g. 25% or 10% of users.

Impact

How big is the value that an individual user will gain from this project.

Possible values:

• 3 - Massive Impact

• 2 - High Impact

• 1 - Medium Impact

• 0.5 - Low Impact

• 0.25 - Minimal Impact

Confidence

How confident are you about the reach and impact of this project.

Possible values:

• 100%

• 80%

• 60%

• 40%

• 20%

Effort

What is the cost of this project?

Possible values:

• 1

• 2

• 3

• 5

• 8

• 13

• 21

• 34

• 55

The value range of this criteria is based on fibonacci numbers. The advantage of using fibonacci numbers is that the value reflects increasing complexity and effort. The higher the effort of a project is, the less accurate is the estimation of the effort.