# ICE Scoring

## Purpose
Prioritize ideas, features, and experiments using a simple framework that balances potential impact, confidence, and effort required.

## When to Use
- Prioritizing product backlog or feature list
- Choosing between multiple experiment ideas
- Deciding what to build next with limited resources
- Creating transparency around prioritization decisions
- Aligning team on what matters most

## Process

### 1. Understand ICE Components

**I - Impact**
If this works, how much does it move the needle?
- Scale: 1-10
- Consider: Revenue, retention, acquisition, or other key metric
- Question: "What's the maximum potential upside?"

**C - Confidence**
How sure are we that this will work?
- Scale: 1-10
- Consider: Data, past experiments, customer feedback, intuition
- Question: "What evidence do we have that this will succeed?"

**E - Ease**
How easy is this to implement and test?
- Scale: 1-10
- Consider: Time, resources, complexity, dependencies
- Question: "How quickly can we learn if this works?"

### 2. Calculate ICE Score

**Formula Options:**

**Simple Average:**
ICE = (Impact + Confidence + Ease) / 3
- Range: 1.0 - 10.0
- Good for: Quick scoring, smaller decisions

**Impact-Weighted:**
ICE = (Impact × 3) + (10 - Effort)
- Range: 0 - 40
- Good for: When impact should dominate decisions
- Note: Use Effort inverse (10 - Ease) if needed

**Multiplicative:**
ICE = Impact × Confidence × Ease
- Range: 1 - 1000
- Good for: Penalizing low scores more heavily

### 3. Score Your Ideas

For each idea, score each dimension:

**Impact Scoring Guide:**
- 10: Massive impact - could 2x the key metric
- 7-9: High impact - significant, measurable improvement
- 4-6: Medium impact - noticeable improvement
- 1-3: Low impact - marginal improvement

**Confidence Scoring Guide:**
- 10: Near certain - strong data, proven elsewhere
- 7-9: High confidence - good signals, tested assumptions
- 4-6: Medium confidence - some signals, reasonable guess
- 1-3: Low confidence - intuition only, untested

**Ease Scoring Guide:**
- 10: Trivial - hours of work, no dependencies
- 7-9: Easy - days of work, few dependencies
- 4-6: Medium - weeks of work, some complexity
- 1-3: Hard - months of work, major dependencies

### 4. Create Your Prioritized List

Sort by ICE score, highest first:

| Rank | Idea | Impact | Confidence | Ease | ICE Score |
|------|------|--------|------------|------|-----------|
| 1 | Simplify signup form | 7 | 8 | 9 | 8.0 |
| 2 | Add social proof | 6 | 7 | 8 | 7.0 |
| 3 | New pricing page | 8 | 6 | 6 | 6.7 |
| 4 | AI feature expansion | 9 | 5 | 3 | 5.7 |

### 5. Apply Judgment

ICE provides ranking, not automatic decisions. Consider:

**Strategic alignment:**
- Does this support our current focus area?
- Is this consistent with our roadmap?

**Dependencies:**
- Does anything else need to happen first?
- Will this enable other high-value work?

**Learning value:**
- Even if impact is low, will we learn something valuable?
- Is this a stepping stone to bigger opportunities?

**Risk distribution:**
- Are we taking enough big bets?
- Are we also shipping quick wins?

### 6. Create a Balanced Portfolio

**Aim for a mix:**
- **Quick wins:** High Ease, decent Impact (keep momentum)
- **Big bets:** High Impact, lower Ease (move the needle)
- **Experiments:** Lower Confidence (test assumptions)

**Avoid:**
- All quick wins (incremental, not transformative)
- All big bets (slow, risky)
- All low confidence (wasteful guessing)

### 7. Re-score Regularly

ICE scores change over time:
- New data increases or decreases Confidence
- Completed work changes Ease
- Strategy shifts change Impact weights

**Cadence:**
- Weekly: Quick review of active list
- Monthly: Full re-scoring of backlog
- Quarterly: Reassess scoring criteria

### 8. Common Mistakes

**Inflating Impact scores:**
- Everything is "high impact" → scores meaningless
- Fix: Calibrate against past results

**Underestimating Ease:**
- Dev says "2 days" → actually 2 weeks
- Fix: Use historical accuracy as calibration

**Ignoring Confidence:**
- "We're pretty sure" = low confidence
- Fix: Require evidence for Confidence > 7

**Gaming the system:**
- Scoring what you want to build high
- Fix: Score together as a team

### 9. Synthesis

After ICE scoring:
- What's the top priority by ICE score?
- Does that feel right given strategy and context?
- What quick wins can we ship while working on big bets?
- What low-confidence ideas should we test cheaply first?
- When will we re-score this list?

## Example

**Product**: SaaS project management tool

**Goal**: Increase trial-to-paid conversion (currently 8%)

### Ideas to Score

**1. Simplify pricing page**
- Impact: 6 - Could improve clarity and conversion
- Confidence: 8 - Best practice, heat maps show confusion
- Ease: 9 - 2 days of work, design ready
- **ICE: 7.7**

**2. Add comparison table vs. competitors**
- Impact: 5 - Helps decision-making
- Confidence: 6 - Some products do this well
- Ease: 7 - Week of work, need research
- **ICE: 6.0**

**3. Implement free team trial (vs. individual)**
- Impact: 9 - Teams convert at 20% vs. individuals at 8%
- Confidence: 8 - Have data from surveys and competitors
- Ease: 4 - 4 weeks of work, billing changes
- **ICE: 7.0**

**4. AI-powered onboarding assistant**
- Impact: 8 - Could transform first experience
- Confidence: 4 - Haven't tested, no data
- Ease: 2 - 3 months of work, new capability
- **ICE: 4.7**

**5. "Getting Started" email sequence**
- Impact: 5 - Improve activation
- Confidence: 7 - Email sequences work for competitors
- Ease: 8 - 1 week, using existing tools
- **ICE: 6.7**

### Prioritized List

| Priority | Idea | ICE | Type |
|----------|------|-----|------|
| 1 | Simplify pricing page | 7.7 | Quick Win |
| 2 | Free team trial | 7.0 | Big Bet |
| 3 | Email sequence | 6.7 | Quick Win |
| 4 | Comparison table | 6.0 | Medium |
| 5 | AI assistant | 4.7 | Future |

### Execution Plan

**Sprint 1 (2 weeks):**
- Ship: Simplify pricing page (Quick Win)
- Ship: Email sequence (Quick Win)
- Plan: Free team trial (Big Bet)

**Sprint 2-4 (6 weeks):**
- Build: Free team trial
- Measure: Pricing page impact
- Measure: Email sequence impact

**Sprint 5+:**
- Evaluate: Did team trial increase conversion?
- Decide: AI assistant worth pursuing?
- Re-score: New ideas based on learnings

### Post-Implementation Review

After 8 weeks:
- Pricing page: +1.2% conversion (confirmed Impact score)
- Email sequence: +0.5% conversion (lower than expected)
- Team trial: Launched, measuring

**Re-scoring AI assistant with new data:**
- Impact: 8 → 7 (email didn't help as much as expected)
- Confidence: 4 → 5 (learned more about what drives activation)
- Ease: 2 → 3 (can reuse onboarding learnings)
- **New ICE: 5.0** (still not a priority)

**Insight:** ICE scoring prevented us from building the "exciting" AI feature first. The mundane pricing page change delivered more impact per hour invested than any other option.
