How to Prioritize Business Growth Opportunities (Ansoff): The ICE Prioritization Tool

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How to Prioritize Business Growth Opportunities (Ansoff): The ICE Prioritization Tool

The Ansoff Matrix can be a useful model to generate and communicate business growth opportunities. However, organizations need to keep in mind that there are several factors that might hinder companies to pursue certain strategies, such as the availability of resources and access to resources. Therefore, companies need to evaluate and prioritize potential strategies in a systematic manner.
Chaneski (2012) argues that business decisions need to be based on priorities. A helpful tool for setting priorities is the ICE tool. ICE stands for 3 factors that should be considered whenever strategic priorities are set: Impact, Cost and Effort:

• IMPACT: Impact can be measured in terms of sales growth; cost savings; quality improvement; better customer service and anything that benefits the company.
• COST: Cost is a critical component when evaluating any growth strategy. With limited funds, companies must make careful choices about where to focus resources. Even the best idea should not be pursued if the costs are too high.
• EFFORT: Strategies must be considered in terms of resources available and time required. Effective allocation of human resources is critical.

Combining these three decision factors yield 5 different scores:

1. A score of 4 is the highest score. It shows an extraordinary opportunity because it can generate a high impact with low cost and low effort. These opportunities must be acted upon immediately.
2. A score of 3 is the second highest. It represents a strong opportunity that can generate a high impact with either low cost or low effort. These opportunities must be acted upon as soon as possible.
3. A score of 2 is the mid-level priority score designating something that provides either a high impact with a high cost and effort, or a low impact that can be achieved at low cost and low effort. Companies may want to address priority 2 opportunities as resources and funds become available.
4. Any opportunities with a score of 1 or 0 on the ICE prioritization tool should probably not be pursued in the near future or not at all.
In conclusion, the ICE prioritization tool evaluates the importance of various tasks or growth strategies that need to be accomplished but compete for the same resources or a limited pool of funds.

⇒ In my experience, the application of the ICE prioritization tool is a useful tool to assess the benefits of growth strategies. The team I worked with listed the various business growth strategies via a brainstorm session, thereby using the Ansoff Matrix as a guide. The ICE tool enabled us to prioritize and choose which growth strategies should obtain highest priority and which should be pursued as a priority. What is your experience? How do you choose between growth strategies? What tools have you found useful or not so useful?

Sources: Chaneski, W.S. 2012, "Use ICE to Set Business Priorities", Modern Machine Shop,vol. 84, no. 9, pp. 34-34, 36.

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		0 Sascha A. Carlin, Germany
	Faceted Feature Analysis The common problem seems to be "how to order activities relative to each other to find out which has more/less value". What I have been using for this is a tiny bit more elaborate than just ICE: boxesandarrows.com/faceted-feature-analysis/ (Allows for priority setting between costs, business value and customer value.) What I never understood with ICE: What is the difference between effort and cost and why is this difference so important that you have to take it into account?

		5 Munadil Shafat Student (MBA), Bangladesh
	How to Prioritize your Projects, Goals or Tasks with the ICE Matrix (Sean Ellis) In this world full of opportunities, most of us have dreams in terms of goals/projects/tasks that are scattered across different domains. Whether it is in a business or personal context, the possibilities seem endless. The only limitation is TIME; we cannot do everything and certainly not at once. Hence the idea of prioritization comes into the scene. Have you ever wondered how to prioritize between all your different projects, goals and tasks? Thanks to Asian Efficiency for introducing me with a nifty tool named the "ICE Matrix" last week. The matrix which is also called the ICE Scoring method, was invented by Sean Ellis. In an everyday situation this matrix can help solve the problem of prioritization between all sorts of projects, tasks and goals that we have in life. It is a simple and straightforward tool that anyone can understand and use. The ICE Matrix ICE stands for: Impact, Confidence and Ease. The idea is to score all your goals/projects/tasks based on this three dimensions. See the following table: Project, Goal or Task Impact Confidence Ease Score (I x C x E) Learn and write on HR / Productivity Learn a programming language Using the ICE Scoring Method In the above illustration I wrote 2 of my own goals to make you understand the use of the matrix. I am an individual passionate about both HR and Technology. I am always learning on the broad areas of HR and Productivity. I write for 12manage as a Management Contributor. And I am also learning a programming language for the last 2 years. I work full-time for a non-profit. These two are my personal projects I usually pursue in my leisure time. Below I scored them both: Project, Goal or Task Impact Confidence Ease Score (I x C x E) Learn and write on HR / Productivity 5 5 3 75 Learn a programming language 4 3 1 12 INTERPRETATION OF THE ICE SCORES For learning and writing on HR/Productivity: The Impact of learning and writing on HR/Productivity is enormous. I have seen it again and again. I can also write with Confidence. So, I give 5 for both. But, I'm not a native English speaker, and so writing in English is not that easy for me. I rated 3 for Ease. For learning a programming language: I'm learning Python (a high-level, easy to read programming language) since 2018, but could hardly grasp the whole concept. Truth be told, I am not sure how much Impact it will have in my life. But I can say it will be worth the effort. So, I rated 4 for impact in this case. For Confidence my score is 3 because sometimes I feel I can learn and master it, sometimes I feel a lack of patience to solve a problem. Nevertheless, learning a programming language is not easy. Hence 1 for Ease. Calculating the ICE Results. Scoring Scoring is easy. Just multiply (don't sum) each rating from I, C and E and you get the total ICE-score! Final Comments Before I got introduced with this matrix, I had devoted most of my leisure time for learning Python. But last week after reading on ICE Matrix, I changed my mind. The above illustration shows the use of ICE Matrix in a personal context. In a business context, there are often more people or even teams involved. But you still use the ICE tool. Just write down all the projects, goals or tasks that people or teams want to undertake for your business and then let them privately rate each one. Finally, add up all individual scores for each project/goal and calculate the final overall score. ⇨ The ICE Matrix helped me prioritize between my two goals. But I'm curious to know your opinion about it. Do you think these three factors best represent the standard evaluation criteria of standard projects / goals? Or can you think of any other factor or suggest a better tool for prioritization? Feel free to react with your constructive and enlightening opinions. Source: Thanh Pham, "How To Prioritize Tasks, Projects and Goals With This Prioritization Matrix and Framework", Asian Efficiency Pavel Kukhnavets, "How ICE Score Method Helps to Choose Better Product Features", HYGGER

		2 Jaap de Jonge Editor, Netherlands
	Similar Framework See also the similar RICE Score Model for (product) requirement prioritization....