A framework for prioritizing integrations

Learn how to use RICE to prioritize your integration efforts

Hey friends 👋🏿

In this week's newsletter, we’ll dive into prioritizing integration initiatives using the RICE framework. RICE is short for reach, impact, confidence, and effort and was originally developed by Intercom.

Below is a deeper dive into the components of RICE!

Reach

Start by estimating how many people your integration will reach. The following can help you estimate a number

• Platform size: What’s the platform size you’re integrating into?

• User overlap: Identify potential user overlap by analyzing customer tool usage (Crossbeam can be great for this)

• Research and forum requests: Gauge demand for your solution on the target platform through forum discussions, feature requests, etc.

Impact

The impact estimate of the potential integration. Key factors to consider:

1. New user contribution: Estimate how the integration will attract new users

2. Existing user contribution: Estimate the integration’s influence on existing users. Will users stay longer or upgrade as a result of this integration?

Intercom uses a five-tiered system for impact 3 = massive impact, 2 = high impact, 1 = medium impact, 0.5 = low impact, 0.25 = minimal impact.

Confidence

The confidence metric is all about how confident you are in your estimates. There are a couple of factors that increase confidence

• Customer Demand: Analyze your feedback, requests, and insights if you have concrete evidence of interest that increases confidence.

• Comparative Analysis: Assess the performance of similar integrations on the target platform to understand demand within the category.

Assign a confidence score: 100% (high confidence), 80% (medium confidence), or 50% (low confidence) based on your assessment.

Effort

Effort involves how much energy it’s going to take to accomplish the integration.

• Time: Evaluate the estimated time for development and launching the integration.

• Resource: Consider the total personpower required especially if you need to engage various teams.

A common unit of measurement is person-months, e.g., 4 team members working full-time for 2 months equals 8 person-months.

Combine these factors to calculate your RICE score, and prioritize integrations with higher scores.

That's a wrap! Have you tried using RICE for your projects? I would love to hear if so!

Until next time,

Lola