The Boring Truth of Successful Products That Survive

Changes Should Affect as Many Customers as Possible

Intercom has a framework called RICE that they use to prioritize feature development. Priority = (R)each * (I)mpact * (C)onfidence ÷ (E)ffort. In other words, you want to prioritize features that reach as high a percentage of your userbase as possible, that have the largest impact on users, where you're the most confident about these numbers, and that take the least effort (time).

I've found this super helpful, as you can run pretty much any feature idea through this framework and come up with a score.

Impact is the tricky part, of course. If you're not thoughtful and informed here, you might rate things as having a massive positive impact that actually have a negative impact, or vice versa.

For example, if you aren't aware of what @arvidkahl is talking about in this post — the advantage of focusing on doing one thing well — you might rate a feature as having a great impact for adding new functionality, when in reality it's a negative because it makes your product too complex, reduces focus, makes it harder for people to explain and recommend, etc.

Great article Arvid!

What about the software developer's toolbox of text editors, terminals, and browsers? Those all do many things. Zapier and Notion are newer products that are defined by doing many things. Many long standing utilities I use on my Mac, like Keyboard Maestro and LaunchBar, do many things? Is there really a pattern of successful products doing one thing well?