PIE framework: Potential, importance, and ease

You know that sinking feeling when you look at your product backlog and everything seems equally important? I've been there - staring at a spreadsheet with 50+ feature requests, each one supposedly "critical" according to someone on the team. The truth is, when everything is a priority, nothing is.

That's where prioritization frameworks come in handy. Today I want to walk you through one of my favorites: the PIE framework. It's simple enough to explain over coffee but powerful enough to transform how your team decides what to build next.

The importance of prioritization in product development

Let's be real - product teams never have enough resources. You've got customers asking for features, stakeholders pushing their pet projects, and engineers advocating for technical improvements. Everyone wants their thing done yesterday.

Without a solid prioritization method, you end up playing favorites or chasing whatever's loudest. I've seen teams burn through quarters building features that barely moved the needle, while high-impact opportunities sat gathering dust in the backlog. The teams that win are the ones that consistently pick the right battles.

That's why frameworks matter. They give you a systematic way to cut through the noise and compare apples to apples. The PIE framework - which stands for Potential, Importance, and Ease - is particularly good at this. It forces you to think about three critical questions: How much could this improve things? How valuable is the area we're improving? And how hard will it be to pull off?

Product managers are usually the ones wrestling with these decisions. They're caught between what users want, what the business needs, and what's technically feasible. A good framework turns those subjective debates into data-driven discussions. Instead of arguing about whose project is more important, you can actually score and compare them.

The payoff for getting prioritization right is huge. Teams that focus on high-impact work ship products people actually use. They hit their metrics and build momentum instead of spinning their wheels on nice-to-haves.

Introducing the PIE framework

Origins and purpose

Chris Goward created the PIE framework specifically for conversion optimization, but here's the thing - it works for almost any product decision. The genius is in its simplicity: rate everything on Potential, Importance, and Ease, then multiply the scores together.

Originally, marketing teams used PIE to figure out which A/B tests to run first. But product teams quickly realized it could help them prioritize features, bug fixes, and technical debt too. Any time you have more ideas than resources (which is always), PIE can help you choose.

The three criteria explained

Let's break down what each criterion actually means:

Potential is all about upside. You're asking: "If this works perfectly, how much better could things get?" This is where you dig into your analytics and user feedback. Look for:

• Pages with terrible conversion rates

• Features with high drop-off rates

• Common customer complaints

• Areas way behind industry benchmarks

The key insight? Focus on fixing what's broken before optimizing what's already working. A checkout page converting at 20% has way more potential than one already hitting 80%.

Importance measures business impact. Not all improvements are created equal - fixing a bug on your pricing page matters more than tweaking an rarely-used admin screen. Consider:

• How much traffic or usage the area gets

• The value of that traffic (paying customers vs. free users)

• Strategic importance to the business

• Impact on key metrics

Ease is your reality check. This covers both technical complexity and organizational hurdles. A simple frontend change might be technically easy but politically impossible if it requires sign-off from five departments. Factor in:

• Developer time required

• Dependencies on other teams or systems

• Political sensitivities

• Risk of breaking other things

Score each criterion from 1-10, multiply them together, and boom - you've got your PIE score. Higher scores win.

Applying the PIE framework in your projects

Here's how to actually use PIE without overthinking it:

Start by listing out your potential projects - features, experiments, whatever you're considering. For each one, have your team score Potential, Importance, and Ease from 1-10. Don't get too precious about the exact numbers. The goal is relative comparison, not scientific precision.

Say you're debating between three projects:

• Redesigning your onboarding flow (P:8, I:9, E:4 = 288)

• Adding a dark mode (P:3, I:5, E:8 = 120)

• Fixing search performance (P:6, I:7, E:6 = 252)

The onboarding redesign wins despite being harder because the potential impact is massive. Dark mode might be easy, but it's not moving the needle on your core metrics.

The magic happens when you do this as a team. Getting everyone to score independently first, then discussing the differences. You'll uncover hidden assumptions - maybe engineering thinks something is way harder than it actually is, or product overestimated user demand.

Teams at Sprout Social use PIE to evaluate everything from small UI tweaks to major infrastructure projects. Product managers on Reddit consistently mention it as one of their go-to tools because it translates messy debates into clear numbers. The framework gives you a shared language for discussing trade-offs.

Keep your PIE scores in a simple spreadsheet and update them as you learn more. That feature that seemed super important might tank in user testing. The "impossible" technical challenge might turn out to have an open-source solution. Prioritization isn't a one-time exercise - it's an ongoing conversation.

Limitations and best practices for the PIE framework

PIE isn't perfect. The biggest weakness? Those 1-10 scores are pretty subjective. What's a "7" for ease to one person might be a "4" to another. The solution is calibration, not abandoning the framework.

Spend time upfront aligning on what the scores mean. Maybe a "10" for Potential means doubling a key metric, while a "5" means a 20% improvement. Create reference points everyone can agree on. Some teams even score a few past projects together to build shared understanding.

PIE also misses some important factors:

• Dependencies between projects

• Strategic alignment with company goals

• Team morale and interests

• Long-term technical debt

That's why many teams combine PIE with other approaches. RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) adds nuance by considering how many users are affected and how confident you are in your estimates. At Statsig, teams often use PIE for quick prioritization then layer in more sophisticated analysis for bigger decisions.

The best practice? Use PIE as a starting point, not gospel. If your highest-scoring project depends on another team that's swamped, maybe pick #2 instead. If working on a lower-scored project would teach your team a critical new skill, factor that in.

Document why you scored things the way you did. Six months later when someone asks "Why didn't we build feature X?" you'll have a paper trail showing it scored a 75 while everything else was 200+. This transparency builds trust and helps new team members understand your thinking.

Review your priorities every few weeks. Markets shift, competitors launch features, and user behavior changes. That project you deprioritized last quarter might suddenly become critical. The framework should evolve with your understanding.

Closing thoughts

Prioritization frameworks like PIE won't magically solve all your product planning challenges, but they give you a fighting chance at focusing on what matters. The real value isn't in the scores themselves - it's in forcing your team to think critically about potential, importance, and ease.

Start simple. Pick five projects or experiments you're considering and run them through the PIE framework. See what rises to the top. You might be surprised to find that gut-feel favorite isn't actually the best use of your time.

Want to dive deeper? Check out:

• Chris Goward's original work on PIE for conversion optimization

• Intercom's guide to the RICE framework for a more complex alternative

• Statsig's experimentation platform if you want to test your prioritized ideas quickly

Hope you find this useful! The next time you're drowning in competing priorities, remember: score it, sort it, ship it. Your future self (and your team) will thank you.