We were in a roadmap review. It was my first with this new leadership team — the CEO had joined 3 months before and brought our new CFO with her. I was confident; the team and I had spoken to customers, run four design studios and checked the metrics.

I had just walked the board through our top priorities — all neatly scored using RICE.

We’d considered reach, impact, confidence, and effort. It was clean. Logical. Defensible.

Then the CFO asked a straightforward question:

“… which of these helps us hit our revenue targets this quarter?”

Crickets. There was sweat on my brow; I was sure of it.

I glanced back at the top item on the list, hoping the answer was right there: our sleek new feature that boosted engagement. Customers loved the idea — they had told us so.

But what about business value? It’s vague at best. A maybe. A possible nice-to-have.

That’s when it hit me.

RICE helps you prioritise what your users want, not what your business needs.

That was the day I realised I needed a better model. One that didn’t just reward effort vs delight but helped us weigh customer impact against business outcomes.

I felt foolish to have only considered value in one dimension — right there and then, I swore to myself (under my breath) that I’d never miss balancing business needs with user needs ever again.

The RICE Trap — When Prioritisation Feels Right but Fails Anyway

After that meeting, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

We weren’t wrong.

Our winning feature was high-impact for users. We had the interviews. The heatmaps. The metrics (wrong ones, as it turned out!). Even a few stakeholders cheered it on.

But it didn’t move the metrics that mattered to the business.

No uplift in conversion. No improvement in retention. No real connection to the goals the exec team cared about.

That’s the RICE trap.

It creates a comforting sense of objectivity — a tidy number that makes your roadmap feel rigorous.

But the scoring often hides how fragile the logic really is.

• Reach? Often inflated.
• Impact? Almost always interpreted as customer impact.
• Confidence? A vibe.
• Effort? A gut feeling disguised as a Fibonacci number.

We call it prioritisation, but too often, we’re just assigning numbers to assumptions.

And that’s the problem: RICE doesn’t help you ask the hard questions — especially the one that counts in most leadership conversations:

“What’s the business case for this?”

So I started experimenting.

What if we made business value explicit?

What if we scored it just like we do customer value?

That’s when BRICE was born.

Introducing BRICE — The Grown-Up Version of RICE

I didn’t want to throw RICE out. It’s clean, communicable, and everyone already speaks it.

But the more seasoned the team got — and the more pressure we felt to prove real business impact — the more obvious it became:

We weren’t just prioritising what to build. We were prioritising what to bet on.

And the business cared about very different bets than the product team did.

I started tweaking the model.

Everything stayed the same — Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort — but I added one new factor, right at the top:

B = Business Impact

Not a proxy. Not baked into “Impact” by implication.

A deliberate, explicit score for:

• Revenue potential
• Strategic alignment
• Cost savings
• Retention and expansion impact
• Operational efficiency
• Risk mitigation

This wasn’t just about financial return. It was about making business outcomes part of the prioritisation conversation — early and out loud.

BRICE = (Business Impact × Reach × Customer Impact × Confidence) / Effort

Suddenly, the roadmap changed.

Features that used to top the list because customers would like them dropped down.

Quiet enablers that mapped directly to business goals moved up.

And most importantly?

When the exec team asked, “Why this?” we had more than a customer narrative.

We had a business case.

RICE vs BRICE — What Happens When You Add the ‘B’

Let’s put you in the hot seat.

You’ve got three initiatives competing for space on your next roadmap.

The team’s already done a round of scoring using RICE, and the results look like this:

Your Top Contenders:

1. Social Sharing Feature: Customers have been asking for it in feedback sessions. Product usage might go up. Feels “delightful.”
2. Pricing Page Revamp: It’s not as flashy, but marketing’s flagged that the current page is hurting conversions. Clear potential for revenue uplift.
3. Internal Ops Tool for Support Team: This is invisible to users but cuts response times by 40%. Could reduce churn, improve CSAT, and unlock operational savings.

At first glance, the Social Sharing feature looks like a no-brainer.

But now, let’s run the same features through BRICE, adding a score for Business Impact.

The BRICE Scores:

At first glance, the Social Sharing feature topped the list. But once we added business impact, the story flipped.

The Internal Tool — almost invisible to users — still scores high, thanks to its operational leverage. It reduces cost, improves efficiency, and indirectly supports retention.

But the real standout? The Pricing Page Revamp.

It’s not the most glamorous, but it hits that rare sweet spot:

• Clear customer value (solves a real friction point)
• Substantial business upside (directly impacts conversion and revenue)
• Solid evidence backing the opportunity

With RICE, it looked average. With BRICE, it becomes a top priority.

And that’s the whole point.

BRICE doesn’t kill customer value — it contextualises it.

It doesn’t just help you spot business-first ideas — it helps you find the ones that serve both the customer and the company.

Using BRICE Without Falling for the Numbers

Here’s the trick with any prioritisation framework:

• It gives you numbers, but the number is not the truth.
• It’s a prompt. A proxy. A way to structure better conversations — not to outsource thinking.

Scoring isn’t the decision. It’s just the start of the decision.

Let’s get real for a second: most of the numbers we feed into RICE or BRICE come from…

• Gut feel
• “Best guess” confidence
• Slippery impact estimates
• And that one loud stakeholder in the meeting

So how do we use BRICE intelligently without getting seduced by a tidy spreadsheet?

Let’s level up how we use the model, not just the model itself.

Step 1: Add a “Confidence Justification” Column

Don’t just score confidence. Explicitly state the why. Turn it into a short statement of the evidence behind your score.

Example:

Step 2: Track the Biggest Assumption

For every high-scoring item, call out the riskiest thing you’re assuming is true.

This becomes your starting point for learning:

• Will users actually adopt it?
• Will it reduce churn or just shift attention?
• Does it really align with the business model?

“If this assumption is wrong, will this feature still deliver value?”

If the answer is no — hit pause and test.

Step 3: Use BRICE to Prioritise Learning, Not Just Shipping

What if an item scores well but has low confidence or an unclear business impact?

That’s not a green light — that’s a signal to learn more before you build.

• Design a spike. Run a quick test. Talk to customers.
• Find the evidence that raises confidence — or lowers risk.

The best product teams don’t just build — they invest in learning loops.

Step 4: Review and Reflect

BRICE is not a one-and-done exercise.

Make it part of your rhythm — not just a quarterly artefact:

• Revisit scores monthly or after key learning milestones
• Update business impact assumptions as strategy evolves
• Keep your prioritisation real-time, not ritualistic

You’re not scoring ideas. You’re scoring bets — and bets evolve. Confidence isn’t a vibe — it’s your evidence score.

Try This on Monday

Want to apply BRICE without a heavy lift?

Here’s a dead-simple way to start:

1. Take your top 5 roadmap items
2. Add a “Business Impact” score to your existing RICE spreadsheet
3. Justify your confidence in 1 sentence per item
4. Highlight your riskiest assumption
5. Discuss as a team: What do we actually know? What do we need to learn?

No meetings are required. Just clarity, fast.

You’ll be amazed how quickly it separates the “feel good” features from the moves-the-needle features.

Step Out of the Trap — Prioritise Like a Strategist

You don’t need more features.

You need more clarity.

Clarity on what matters to your users — yes. But also clarity on what matters to your business. Because the real job of a product manager isn’t just to build things customers love.

It’s to create outcomes that matter — on both sides of the equation.

That’s what BRICE is about.

• Not just about shipping faster.
• Not just scoring better.
• But thinking sharper.
• Making smarter bets.

And being able to look your CEO in the eye and say:

“Here’s what we’re doing — and here’s why it matters.”

Because when you can balance customer value with business impact — and back it up with evidence — you don’t just look strategic.

You are.