Stop 09 · Growth Marketing & ExperimentationTopics · 9/9

Growth Experiment Prioritization (ICE / PIE)

In short

You'll always have more test ideas than time. ICE and PIE are simple scoring systems that help a team agree on what to try first, without endless debate.

Frameworks for ranking a backlog of growth ideas — ICE scores Impact, Confidence, Ease; PIE scores Potential, Importance, Ease — both help teams focus limited testing capacity on the highest-value experiments.

The blob rushes around a messy hostel room holding a broom and a pile of clothes.

Think of it like this

Parents visiting the hostel in an hour

Parents arrive in an hour. You can't clean everything. You score each chore: how much it shows, how sure you are it helps, how quick it is. Clearing the floor wins. Organising old notes waits. That's ICE scoring.

Watch it happen

Scoring four test ideas with ICE (1 to 10)

Reviews near button

New logo

WhatsApp sign-up

Referral reward

1/5Four ideas from the team. Each gets an Impact, Confidence and Ease score from 1 to 10.

The big ideas

What you need to know

ICE

Impact, Confidence, Ease. Score each 1 to 10 and average or multiply them.

PIE

Potential, Importance, Ease. Popular for choosing which pages to optimise first.

Scores are rough

They're guesses. Their job is to make thinking visible and start a short discussion.

Re-score as you learn

Test results change your confidence. Update scores every few weeks.

See it in code

Walk through the code

excel

1     A                    B (Impact)  C (Conf.)  D (Ease)  E (ICE)22    Reviews near button   7           8          9         =AVERAGE(B2:D2)33    New logo              3           2          4         =AVERAGE(B3:D3)44    WhatsApp sign-up      8           6          5         =AVERAGE(B4:D4)55    Referral reward       9           5          3         =AVERAGE(B5:D5)6     Sort by column E, largest first

1/3One column per factor, one row per idea.

An ICE sheet in Google Sheets. Some teams multiply the three scores instead of averaging; pick one and stay consistent.

Save yourself the pain

Common mistakes

Oops

Letting the most senior person's idea always score 10 on impact.

Do this instead

Score ideas as a group and back confidence with evidence, like data or user feedback.

Oops

Treating ICE scores as precise maths.

Do this instead

They're a quick sorting aid. Use them to start decisions, not to end discussion.

Your mission

Prioritise your own backlog

~20 min

Quick check

An idea has Impact 9, Confidence 2, Ease 3. What's the most useful next step?

Go deeper

1Score 5 hypothetical growth experiment ideas using ICE.
2Learn why prioritization frameworks structure a debate rather than remove the need for judgment.
3Practice defending your top-ranked experiment against a plausible counter-argument.