Guide
Scoring Product Opportunities
Rank ideas you can defend. The intensity, frequency, willingness-to-pay framework in depth, how to weight it, its pitfalls, and how it fits alongside RICE and WSJF.
Scoring turns a pile of ideas into a ranked list you can defend. This guide covers the intensity, frequency, willingness-to-pay framework, how to weight it, its pitfalls, and how it compares to RICE, ICE, and WSJF.
Frequency: measure it, do not guess it
Frequency is deterministic. Count how many distinct discussions cluster into the opportunity, across how many sources, and how recently. More breadth and more recency means stronger, more durable demand.
Intensity: read the emotional temperature
Intensity is how severe the pain is: frustration, workarounds, churn threats, "this is killing us." Score it from the actual language people use, not your own excitement.
Willingness to pay: follow the money
Look for mentions of paid tools, budgets, switching costs, and "I would pay for this." Business-critical framing signals real willingness to pay.
Weight and combine
Combine the three into a composite score with explicit weights. Make the weights visible so the ranking is transparent and tunable, not a black box.
Watch the pitfalls
Beware loud minorities (one vivid thread is not demand), survivorship bias (you only hear from people still around), and recency bias (a spike is not a trend). Breadth and time guard against all three.