MCP tool: pm_ice_score

ICE Scoring

RICE without Reach. Three numbers, multiplied together, used when you need an ordering in 20 minutes.

When to use this

You're a solo PM or a small team doing a quick sort on 5-8 ideas. Reach is roughly the same across the candidates (a dashboard feature for users who already use the dashboard). You want a ranking now, not a research project.

When NOT to use this

You have 10+ features to compare -- the scale collapses and everything ends up between 200 and 700. Reach varies wildly (a niche power-user feature vs a homepage change) -- use RICE. The decision is high-stakes and you'll have to defend it -- RICE forces more discipline.

Inputs

  • Impact: How much the feature moves your goal. 1-10 scale.
  • Confidence: How sure you are about Impact and Ease. 1-10 scale.
  • Ease: How easy it is to build and ship. 1-10, where 10 is trivial and 1 is a heavy lift.

The math

Score = Impact x Confidence x Ease

All three on the same scale, all multiplied. The maximum is 1,000 and the minimum is 1. Higher score, higher priority.

A worked example

Say you're a solo PM running a quarterly review of 6 ideas. You score each axis 1-10.

IdeaImpactConfidenceEaseScore
Add a "Recently viewed" list689432
Redesign settings page475140
Auto-save drafts897504
Slack integration744112
Keyboard shortcuts588320
Multi-language support962108

Auto-save drafts wins (504). "Recently viewed" is a close second (432). Multi-language sounds important but Ease is brutal -- score 108. Slack integration has medium impact but you're not confident it'll get used.

The ranking matches intuition for the obvious cases. It also surfaces the Slack call: low confidence drags it down. Worth more research before committing.

How pmtoolkit does it differently

Same infrastructure as RICE -- saved sessions, comparison across cohorts, MCP tool access -- but stripped down to the three inputs. Use it when adding Reach would be guesswork; the result is honest about being a rough sort.

Common mistakes

  • Scoring everything 7-9. Force a real spread. If the highest is 9 and the lowest is 7, the framework isn't doing anything.
  • Treating Confidence as a courtesy bump. Confidence should knock obviously speculative ideas down. If it doesn't, you're using it wrong.
  • Using ICE when Reach varies a lot. A feature for 50 users and a feature for 50,000 users shouldn't rank by the same three numbers.

Try it

Live calculatorRaw .md
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