ICE scoring is a simple, rough, and fairly good method for quickly prioritizing without focused, comprehensive analysis.
It offers a slick way to trim things down and provide some comparison points to make a decision. It’s rather not best suited for prioritizing the entire roadmap or things that require a more accurate and consistent assessment. But it quickly works wonders in helping you see the big picture better when you jot down all your tasks on paper and immediately see where you should go first.
I suggest you try it out on tasks that you have for the week, those that are not routine or urgent, and see for yourself whether the ICE scoring model works for you or not, and where it works better.
To get started, just write down a list of things you plan to take next week. Like this:
- Plan my next vacation
- Review the latest version of the product
- Prepare communication skills training for the team
- Assess suggested analytics program
- …
ICE stands for Impact, Confidence and Ease, each from 1 to 10. These three elements are simply multiplied to give you the final grade.
ICE score = Impact * Confidence * Ease
Where
- Impact is the effect that you expect to receive when the task is completed, from 1 to 10. Measuring impact you need however to keep in mind your goal against which you are evaluating these metrics.
- Confidence is the degree to which you are confident that you will see the predicted effect when the task is completed, from 1 to 10.
- Ease is how easy it is to complete the task, from 1 to 10, where 1 is extremely hard and 10 is super easy.
Continuing with the example, let’s say, our goal in the background is to get closer with the team. Now let’s evaluate metrics.
On top of the list we see the “vacation planning” task, because it directly impacts the goal (if I’m absent at the wrong time this doesn’t help me build the rapport) and because it is an easy task, in total it gets the highest score.
That’s it. I actually used it recently for some very long-term perspective tasks, and it just helped me identify more and less important directions to follow. This is the very magic, when in one case you know or feel something and it has some effect, and when in another case you see the “proof” on paper and it amplifies the effect.