Rice prioritization is a simple yet effective prioritization algorithm used in project management and software development. The name derives from the acronym RISEC, which stands for Risk Item Sort & Evaluate by Calculating Costs. The process of prioritizing items according to this method includes sorting them into increasing order of cost or effort required for implementation, evaluating each item with respect to some criteria, and finally ranking the items so that the most important projects are listed first. This prioritization method can be applied to product prioritization in business strategy contexts, portfolio prioritization in business administration contexts, or simply next tasks on your list at home or work! We have brought you models on how to sort lists, multiple methods on how to prioritize, prioritization, and prioritize lists.
Rice model: This prioritization method is used to prioritize opportunities and it is named after the acronym RICE. (i) High risk/high impact.
(ii) High risk/low impact.
(iii) Low risk/high impact.
(iv) Low risk/low impact.
The items are therefore prioritized in order of how risky they are with respect to being achieved by you. We have brought you infographics on how to prioritize your life goals, other methods of prioritizing including the Pareto principle that will help you sort out your priorities fast while maintaining efficiency, tips for using certain prioritization strategies, and prioritizing a to-do list.
Project management rice prioritization process
Strengths: visualizes priorities; makes sense; pleasant to use; easy to understand; intuitive; easy to implement & update Weaknesses: may not be measurable or objective enough for some people; could be difficult to compare different items against each other The first column has been prioritized and is prioritized in order of least to most important.
The prioritization process itself is a simple one: you start at the top and work down until you have prioritized all of your goals.
At each step, ask yourself two easy questions
- “Does this project give me confidence for my next most important goal?”
- “Is it more important than anything I’ve already prioritized?”
By prioritizing from least to most important, we are able to avoid tying ourselves into knots prioritizing too many items, or wasting time by prioritizing things that don’t matter as much as other things do.
An example of prioritization for a digital marketing campaign. The scope of the phases was prioritized, moving from analysis through to delivery. The phases that were deemed as high risk or low opportunity were prioritized as ‘1’ while those with the lowest risk and highest opportunity were prioritized as ‘5’. Ensure you have an informed approach when prioritizing your opportunities so that you can manage them efficiently.
Preferably choose a prioritization method according to the scale & criteria of what is important for you at this point in time. For instance, there could be different parameters for prioritizing school work versus personal goals.
RICE score: A simple scoring system developed by Mark Rice is prioritizing the opportunity based on what is most important to you. Add up all the stars of an opportunity and prioritize according to your preference, with 5 stars being the highest priority & 1 star being the least prioritized.
In IT project prioritization rice prioritization is a special prioritization technique where prioritization is done with the help of the power of RICE.
Its prioritization is done on the basis of three parameters
R- Rank: Prioritization is based on the rank according to the level of urgency.
I- Importance for business: On the basis of importance it prioritizes among them.
C- Urgency: The time limit available for achieving that objective opportunity or task.
E- Evaluation: It prioritizes based on expectations & risk factors associated with each objective.
Every star is assigned a weight which gets multiplied by your preferred choice to get your final prioritized list.
The prioritization is done in the following way
Rank your objectives according to their importance. Multiply the rank by the weightage assigned to the rank given to it. Then multiply with the urgency factor so that you can get a prioritized list that is based on importance, urgency & risk associated with each opportunity. It is a completely factual prioritizing system that helps in finding out which most important objectives need attention first whereas the least priority one needs early consideration.
Rice prioritization has the following benefits
- It identifies priority early
- Get a prioritized report of what should be the future plan
- Support the better decision-making process
- Helps management to focus on the most urgent task
Here’s an example, 6 opportunities are there. 3 are needed urgently while 3 are not so urgent in comparison to the other 3 . Here’s how you should prioritize using rice prioritization.
Stars (Importance)
1: Star (Needed Urgently )- 3 Opportunities (Weightage = 3*3= 9)
2: Stars (Not So Urgently Needed)- 2 Opportunities (Weightage=2*3=6 )
3: Stars (Least Urgently Needed )- 1 Opportunity (Weightage=1*4+0 *5 = 4 )
Final prioritized List = 3, 2, 1, prioritizing is done in this order. So the prioritized list you will get is ‘Urgently needed opportunities are required to be prioritized’ i.e. prioritization among them on the basis of importance.
