A/B Test
An A/B test aims to compare the performance of two items or variations against one another. In product management, A/B tests are often used...
Glossary Category Product Management
Alpha Test
An alpha test is typically conducted by a product manager at the point when development is near completion. It generally occurs before any beta...
Annual Recurring Revenue
What Is Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)? Annual recurring revenue (ARR) refers to all ongoing revenue for a product or business, projected over one year....
Behavioral Product Management
What is Behavioral Product Management? Behavioral product management applies behavioral science and human psychology to product design. When planning their products, behavioral product managers...
Beta Test
A beta test is a widespread pre-launch distribution of a product (typically software), in which users are asked to try the product and provide...
Bill of Materials (BOM)
A bill of materials (BOM) is a complete list of the materials needed to build a product. A BOM typically lists all the parts...
Buyer Persona
A buyer persona is often created by product teams to describe the broad cohort of individuals who have a say in the purchasing process....
Cannibalization
In product management, cannibalization is when two different products from the same company compete with one other. Product managers are often responsible for an...
Change Management
Change management is a systematic approach to supporting employees and teams as an organization transitions to new processes, tools, or initiatives.
Change Management Principles
What Are Change Management Principles? Change management principles are the guiding practices business leaders should follow to effectively manage change, transitions, and disruptions within...
CIRCLES Method
What is the CIRCLES Method? The CIRCLES method is a problem-solving framework that helps product managers (PMs) make a thorough and thoughtful response to...
Continuous Improvement
What Is Continuous Improvement? Continuous improvement is a company culture that encourages all employees to look for ways to enhance the business’s operations. This...
Cross-Functional Team
A cross-functional team refers to a group which contains expertise or representation from various "functional" departments. For example, an agile cross-functional team may consist...
Customer Advisory Board
A customer advisory board is a group of customers who come together on a regular basis to share insights and advice with an organization....
Customer Development
Customer development is the portion of the Lean Startup methodology aimed at understanding the problem. This requires first fully vetting the opportunity and validating...
Customer Empathy
Customer empathy is understanding the underlying needs and feelings of customers. It goes beyond recognizing and addressing their tactical requirements and puts things into...
Customer Experience
What Is Customer Experience? Customer experience refers to the totality of a customer’s encounters with a business and how those interactions make the person...
Customer Journey Map
Customer journey maps are visual depictions of the various touch points customers make over time when interacting with an organization. They can outline various...
DACI Decision-Making Framework
The DACI decision-making framework is a model designed to improve a team's effectiveness and velocity on projects, by assigning team members specific roles and...
Definition of Done
What Does the ‘Definition of Done’ Mean? In the Scrum agile framework, the Definition of Done describes the list of requirements that the team...
Design Ops
What is design ops, and why should you make it a part of your product team’s culture? This page will walk you through the...
Digital Product Manager
What Is a Digital Product Manager? A product manager is responsible for driving the development of products to market success. A digital product manager...
Digital Transformation
Digital transformation is the act of revolutionizing business processes to take advantage of digital technologies, with the goal of making them more efficient, accessible,...
Disruptive Innovation
Disruptive innovation is a term coined by Clayton M. Christensen to describe any type of innovation that creates a new industry, market, or business...
End-User Era
What Is the End-User Era? The end-user era refers to a new trend in how businesses buy software. The decisions about which enterprise applications...
Enterprise Transformation
What Is Enterprise Transformation? Enterprise transformation refers to a fundamental change in the way a business operates. This could include a change to an...
Feature Bloat
What is Feature Bloat? Feature bloat is a term to describe the result of packing too many features and functionalities into a product. Usually,...
Feature Factory
What is a Feature Factory? In product management lingo, feature factory is typically a derogatory term. It describes a business focused on building features...
Feature Flag
What is a Feature Flag? A feature flag refers to a team’s ability to turn a feature or functionality “on” or “off” at their...
Feature Kickoff
What is a Product Feature Kickoff? A product feature kickoff is a meeting in which a product manager and relevant stakeholders set plans, goals,...
Features
What are Features? Features are a product’s traits or attributes that deliver value to end-users and differentiate a product in the market. For example,...
Hook Model
What is the Hook Model? The Hook Model is a four-phase process that businesses can use to create products or services used habitually by...
Idea Management
What is Idea Management? Idea management is a structured approach to generating and evaluating ideas that could help improve an organization’s bottom line. In...
Information Flows in Product Management
What is the Definition of Information Flows in Product Management? The success of any product depends on coordination among several departments across the company....
IoT (Internet of Things) Product Manager
IoT (internet of things) product managers are product professionals who are responsible for products that connect to the internet. The role is in a...
Iterative Testing
What Is Iterative Testing? Iterative testing refers to making small, gradual changes or updates to a product based on insights (e.g., test results and...
Lead Product Manager
What Is a Lead Product Manager? A lead product manager is a position that has different responsibilities in different companies. Three of the most...
Market Requirements Document (MRD)
A market requirements document, or an MRD, is a strategic document written by a product manager to help define the market’s requirements or demand...
Method of Procedure
What is a Method of Procedure? A method of procedure (MOP) is a step-by-step guideline for completing a project. Think of it as a...
Minimum Viable Feature (MVF)
What Is a Minimum Viable Feature? A Minimum Viable Feature (or MVF) is a small-scale feature that can quickly be built and rolled out—using...
Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
An MVP, or minimum viable product, represents the earliest stage in the product’s development cycle at which the company believes it has enough features...
Pendo
What Is Pendo? Pendo is a product-analytics app built to help software companies develop products that resonate with customers. The app allows software makers...
Persona
In product management, a persona is a profile of a product’s typical user. Personas are used to help a product manager (and others in...
PERT Chart
What Is a PERT Chart? A PERT chart is a visual project management tool used to map out and track the tasks and timelines....
Product Architecture
What is Product Architecture? Product architecture is the organization (or chunking) of a product’s functional elements. It’s the ways these elements, or chunks, interact....
Product Brief
What is a Product Brief? A product brief, or product spec, defines a product’s goals, attributes, and overall direction. It outlines requirements and key...
Product Design
Product design describes the process of imagining, creating, and iterating products that solve users’ problems or address specific needs in a given market.
Product Differentiation
What is Product Differentiation? Product differentiation is a process used by businesses to distinguish a product or service from other similar ones available in...
Product Enablement
What is Product Enablement? Product enablement helps employees at large companies gain relevant product knowledge. The term takes its name from sales enablement, the...
Product Leadership
What Is Product Leadership? Product leadership can describe several management-level roles with responsibility for the success of the company’s products. The purpose of a...
Product-Led Growth
What Is Product-Led Growth? Product-led growth is a business strategy in which a company uses its product as the main tool to acquire customers....
Product Life Cycle
The product lifecycle model breaks down the various stages of a product’s evolution, from its debut to its retirement. Each phase comes with its...
Product Management Audit
A product management audit is a complete, objective review of a company's product strategy and product management processes. Each aspect of the product strategy...
Product Mix Strategy
What Is a Product Mix Strategy? A successful product mix strategy enables a company to focus efforts and resources on the products and product...
Product Ops
Product ops, or product operations, is a relatively new discipline somewhat similar to marketing ops. Product ops builds a foundation for excellence by reinforcing...
Product Portfolio Manager
What Is a Product Portfolio Manager? A product portfolio manager (PPM) strategically oversees all of the products in a business’s portfolio and ensures alignment...
Product Process Matrix
What Is the Product Process Matrix? The product process matrix merges the product lifecycle, which encompasses all aspects of the product development process—from ideation...
Product Requirements Document
A product requirements document (PRD) is an artifact used in the product development process to communicate what capabilities must be included in a product...
Product Requirements Management
What is Product Requirements Management? Product requirements management is the ongoing process of overseeing the implementation of all requirements needed to deliver a product...
Product Stack
What is a Product Stack? A product stack refers to the apps, technologies, and other resources product managers use to bring their products to...
Program Management
What is Program Management? Program Management is an organizational function that oversees a group of individual projects linked together through a shared organizational goal...
Quality Function Deployment (QFD)
Quality Function Deployment, or QFD, is a model for product development and production popularized in Japan in the 1960's. The model aids in translating...
Rational Product Management
What is Rational Product Management? Rational product management is a unifying process for product development. Based on the rational development process used by the...
Refactoring
Refactoring is the process by which development teams clean up a codebase or change the internal structure of a piece of software to improve...
Release Management
What Is Release Management? Release management is one of those modern business terms that has several meanings. For IT departments, the term describes overseeing...
Release Notes
What Is a Release Note? A release note refers to the technical documentation produced and distributed alongside the launch of a new software product...
Release Plan
What is a Release Plan? Definition: A release plan is a tactical document designed to capture and track the features planned for an upcoming...
Roadmap Milestones
What Are Roadmap Milestones? A roadmap milestone is a date signaling an event or deadline that the product manager wants the team to be...
Roadmap Revolution
What is the Roadmap Revolution? A roadmap revolution is a complete re-evaluation of a product roadmap, commonly conducted at the beginning of the year....
Scope Creep
What is Scope Creep? Scope creep is the phenomenon in which a team’s initial plan—the scope of work it agreed to complete—slowly grows to...
SMART Goal Setting
What is SMART goal setting? SMART framework provides the framework for setting clear, attainable goals in project management. The acronym stands for Specific, Measurable,...
Stakeholder
What are Stakeholders? Stakeholders are individuals (or groups) that can either impact the success and execution of a product or are impacted by a...
Stakeholder Analysis
A stakeholder analysis is the process of identifying stakeholders before a project begins; grouping them according to their levels of participation, interest, and influence...
SWOT Analysis
A SWOT analysis is a planning framework that a business can use to identify a strategic endeavor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The term...
Technical Debt
Technical debt describes what results when development teams take actions to expedite the delivery of a piece of functionality or a project which later...
The User Is Drunk
What Is “The User Is Drunk”? “The User is Drunk” is a product management and UX design concept that emphasizes designing products or websites...
Total Addressable Market (TAM)
Total Addressable Market (TAM) refers to the maximum size of the opportunity for a particular product or solution.
Usability Testing
What is Usability Testing? Usability testing is a technique to evaluate how easy or difficult users find a company’s product. It can also be...
Use Case
What is a Use Case? Definition: A use case is a hypothetical (but plausible) scenario showing how a product’s user might interact with the...
User Experience
User Experience refers to the feeling users experience when using a product, application, system, or service. It is a broad term which can cover...
User Interface
A user interface, or UI, is any part of a product or system which the end user interacts with. Users work within a user...
User Persona
A user persona is a composite biography (or series of biographies) drafted based on market research and experience to describe the relevant characteristics, needs,...
User Research
User research is the discipline of learning about users’ needs and thought processes by studying how they perform tasks, observing how they interact with...
Voice of Customer (VoC)
Voice of customer, or VoC, refers broadly to the various processes by which organizations gather feedback from their customers. It can also refer to...
Waterfall
What Is the Waterfall Method? Waterfall is a long-term product development method characterized by linear sequential phases for planning, building, and delivering new features...
Product
What is the Definition of Product? Ask a few people that question, and their specific answers will vary, but they’ll all probably describe it...
Customer Validation
What Is Customer Validation? Customer validation is an essential phase of the product development process (i.e., the steps needed to take a product from...
Wireframe
What Is a Wireframe? A wireframe is a basic, two-dimensional visual representation of a web page, app interface, or product layout. You can think...
Working Backwards (the Amazon Method)
What Is the Amazon Working Backwards Method? The Amazon working backward method is a product development approach that starts with the team imagining the...
