Mapping Effort to Person-Months for RICE Scoring
Put design, engineering, and QA effort into one comparable unit.
Multiply people by duration in months, include the roles you agreed count toward shipping, and use the same rules for every initiative. Round to sensible increments so the denominator stays comparable.
Outcome: Effort numbers that do not silently favor pet projects via inconsistent estimates.
Prerequisites
- Rough scope per initiative
- A team definition of what one person-month includes
Effort is the denominator—small changes move rankings a lot. Consistency beats false precision: agree whether person-months include design and QA, estimate from the people doing the work, and convert calendar time into focused person-months (half-time and parallel work included explicitly).
Round to sensible steps (often 0.5) so the sheet does not imply fake accuracy. When two initiatives tie on leverage, Effort is rarely the place to break ties—use strategy—but bad Effort hygiene will wreck the whole ranking.
Frequently Asked Questions
Story points instead of time?
Convert through recent velocity—consistency matters more than the exact factor.
Where does uncertainty go?
Prefer holding Effort as a best guess and lowering Confidence—not inflating Effort randomly.