Prioritization
Make the reasoning visible before applying a score. · Product Judgment · Lesson 11 · 3 min
Prioritization · 3 min
Situation
Everything has a high score.
Sales wants an integration, support wants fewer billing errors, and marketing wants a new onboarding flow. Each team supplies optimistic impact numbers.
A ranked spreadsheet can conceal disagreement about the goal. Decide what the next period must achieve before treating scores as comparable.
Mental model
Compare impact, evidence, and constraints.
Ask how each option supports strategy, who benefits, how large the effect could be, how confident you are, and what it costs to build and operate.
Then consider urgency and dependencies. A compliance deadline or a blocker for several teams may require different handling from an optional growth experiment.
Example
Confidence changes the decision.
Billing errors affect a known set of paying accounts and generate recurring support work. The proposed onboarding change could reach more people, but its effect is uncertain.
A small discovery test for onboarding and a focused billing fix may beat a full redesign. Prioritization includes choosing how much to invest now, not just choosing a winner.
Tools
RICE can organize assumptions.
Reach, impact, confidence, and effort can help structure a comparison. The formula does not make estimates objective, account for every dependency, or settle strategic choices.
Use the score to ask why two options differ. Avoid debating tiny numerical differences when the inputs are broad guesses.
Failure case
Treating urgency as whoever asks loudest.
Ask what happens if a request waits two weeks. A real renewal deadline has a consequence; “leadership is excited” may not.
Also count work already in progress. Constantly replacing priorities creates switching costs and unfinished work that a feature-level score rarely captures.
Remember this
A priority is a choice with a reason.
State the objective, the chosen investment, what waits, and what new evidence would change the decision. The explanation should survive removal of the scoring table.