RICE stands for Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. When measuring Reach, teams look to quantify the number of customers who will use the feature benefit from the Backlog item. Whenever Possible, this number should come from actual data, not a guess. Impact asks the team to make an educated guess about how likely the feature in the Backlog will impact an individual user. Confidence measures the team’s confidence in their estimates. Effort measures the amount of work and time the team will need to devote to the Backlog item to complete it.

Pros of RICE

• Puts users at the center
• Relies on data and sold metrics
• Comprehensive

Cons of RICE

• Time-consuming
• Math-heavy
• Data-driven, without a lot of data teams might have to make many guesses

Opportunity scoring relies on two graphs to rank the Backlog items. First, they use a satisfaction graph, ranking how users like a feature. Then they use an importance graph, measuring how much users value a feature. In examining the two charts teams identify what frustrates their users and what their users want.

Pros of opportunity scoring

• Focuses on ROI (Return on investment)
• Works for many different types of Backlogs
• Helps find gaps between user need and value provided

Cons of opportunity scoring

• Teams need to have an existing product, doesn’t work for new features
• Narrow in scope

Japanese researcher Noiraki Kano created the Kano model in the 1980s. The Kano model measures user satisfaction to prioritize the Backlog. Using Kano, the team scores Backlog items by several criteria: Must-be, attractive, one-dimensional, indifferent and reverse. Must-be features are those that customers need for the product to function. Customers see one-dimensional features as important and desirable. Attractive features add value and satisfaction. Indifferent features have small or no value to customers. Reverse features have a negative impact on customers.

Pros of Kano

• Ranks features by their value
• Customer-centered
• Gives easy insight into strengths and weaknesses of a feature

Cons of Kano

• Analyzes only customer opinions, not costs or effort
• Kano doesn’t detail resource requirements

Agile teams use MoSCoW because MoSCoW is simple and easy to use. The acronym stands for Must, should, could and would. MoSCoW allows teams to determine the relative importance of Backlog items. Must means any Backlog item required for a product to function. Should stands for items that have high value to the customer. Could Backlog items are small fixes and features. Would items have the lowest importance and can be added to a future Backlog if the team doesn’t have time.

Pros of MoSCoW

• Easy to use
• Not too technical or mathematical
• Fast 

Cons of MoSCoW

• Zoomed-in view, not an overview
• Not sequenced

This Matrix works well because it maps out Backlog items according to their worth and their difficulty. Value vs Complexity Matrix uses four quadrants to plot these scores. Teams tackle items with high value and low complexity first.

Pros of Value vs Complexity Matrix

• Simple, easy to understand
• Works well to spot easy wins 
• Not math- or analysis-heavy

Cons of Value vs Complexity

• Tends to allow for subjective judgment
• Doesn’t work well for large Backlog lists

Jeff Patton developed Story mapping to add another dimension to Product Backlog prioritization. Story mapping shows more detail than a Product Backlog list. Patton proposes plotting the sequence of the user journey on a horizontal axis. Then we plot the importance on a vertical axis. We group related stories. Agile teams like story mapping for its ease-of-use and transparency. Story mapping gives the team and stakeholders a holistic and rich view of the customer journey.

Pros of story mapping

• Shows complex relationships between different Backlog items
• Flexible
• Gives a full, holistic view of the customer’s journey

Cons of story mapping

• Story maps may become complex

ICE scoring uses a formula to score Backlog items. ICE stands for Impact, confidence and ease. Impact measures the effect of the change. Confidence measures how certain the team feels about their impact score. Ease shows the teams’ opinion about the difficulty of completion. Teams give each part of ICE, Impact, confidence and ease a score from 1-10.

Pros of ICE scoring

• Good for sorting out the best and most important Backlog items
• Shows which tasks might need the same resources to complete

Cons of ICE scoring

• Possibly subjective
• Scores might differ widely between different team members