Affinity Diagram
An affinity diagram helps teams visualize and review large amounts of information by grouping items into categories. This post discusses why affinity diagrams are...
Glossary
Check out our glossary of common product management terms and definitions.
A
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....
Agile Product Owner
What is an Agile Product Owner? In an agile organization, the product owner is responsible for prioritizing and overseeing the development team’s tasks and...
AARRR Pirate Metrics Framework
What is AARRR Pirate Metrics? AARRR Pirate Metrics framework is an acronym for a set of five user-behavior metrics that product-led growth businesses should...
Action Priority Matrix
What is an Action Priority Matrix? An action priority matrix is a diagram that helps people determine which tasks to focus on, and in...
Agile Transformation
Agile transformation is the process of transitioning an entire organization to a nimble, reactive approach based on agile principles. Understanding agile transformation begins with...
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...
Agile Values
Agile Values refers to the set of 4 values outlined by the Agile Alliance in The Agile Manifesto. This set of values encourages putting...
Agile
Agile is an iterative product-development methodology in which teams work in brief, incremental “sprints,” and then regroup frequently to review the work and make...
Acceptance Test
In software development, an acceptance test refers to the process of testing a new system, feature, or functionality against predefined acceptance criteria.
Acceptance Criteria
In agile methodologies, acceptance criteria refers to a set of predefined requirements that must be met in order to mark a user story complete....
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...
Agile Principles
There are 12 agile principles outlined in The Agile Manifesto in addition to the 4 agile values. These 12 principles for agile software development help...
Agile Manifesto
The Agile Manifesto is a brief document built on 4 values and 12 principles for agile software development. The Agile Manifesto was published in...
Affinity Grouping
Affinity grouping can be used as a collaborative prioritization activity. It works by having a group of participants brainstorm ideas and opportunities on Post-It...
Adaptive Software Development (ASD)
Adaptive Software Development (ASD) is a direct outgrowth of an earlier agile framework, Rapid Application Development (RAD). It aims to enable teams to quickly...
Agile Framework
An agile framework is one of many documented software-development approaches based on the agile philosophy articulated in the Agile Manifesto.
B
Bubble Sort
Product managers can use bubble sort to arrange a string of initiatives in the correct order based on prioritization scores.
Bucket Sort
What is Bucket Sort? Bucket Sort is a sorting technique that places items in buckets, or categories. These items are then prioritized or ranked...
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...
Business Transformation
What is Business Transformation? Business transformation is an umbrella term for making fundamental changes in how a business or organization runs. This includes personnel,...
Business Agility
What is Business Agility? Business agility applies the principles of agile development to the entire organization. This allows companies to be more responsive to...
Buy-a-Feature
Buy-a-Feature is one of many prioritization frameworks product managers can use. It's commonly used to help organizations identify the features that customers and key...
Backlog Grooming
Backlog grooming, also referred to as backlog refinement or story time, is a recurring event for agile product development teams. The primary purpose of...
Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence (BI), is a method of compiling, analyzing and interpreting business data to make better-informed decisions. BI data is typically compiled through extensive...
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...
Business Model Canvas
A business model canvas is a one-page summary describing the high-level strategic details needed to get a business (or product) successfully to market. The...
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....
Burndown Chart
A burndown chart is a visual display of work completed and remaining in a project, sprint, or iteration. In most cases the x-axis of...
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...
C
Competitive Landscape
What is competitive landscape? The term refers to the list of options a customer could choose rather than your product.
Concept Review
What is a concept review? The term refers to the initial idea for a new product or feature and its implementation.
Captive Product Pricing
Captive product pricing is a pricing strategy to attract a large volume of customers to purchase a core product once that has accessories.
Channels of Distribution
A channel of distribution—also referred to as a distribution channel—is the method a company uses to get a product or service into the hands...
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...
Certified Product Manager
What is a Certified Product Manager? A certified product manager is a PM who has completed an education program from a product industry organization....
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...
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...
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...
Cost of Delay
Cost of delay (CoD) is a prioritization framework that helps a business quantify the economic value of completing a project sooner as opposed to...
Chief Product Officer
What is a Chief Product Officer? A chief product officer (CPO) is a corporate title referring to an executive who leads the entire product...
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...
Change Management
Learn how change management refers to a systematic approach to supporting employees and teams through transitions to new processes or tools.
Churn
Churn is a measurement of the percentage of accounts that cancel or choose not to renew their subscriptions. A high churn rate can negatively...
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Customer Acquisition Cost, or CAC, measures how much you’re spending to acquire new customers. Analyzing CAC in conjunction with LTV or MRR is a...
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 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...
Crystal Agile Framework
What is the Crystal Method? Crystal is an agile framework focusing on individuals and their interactions, as opposed to processes and tools. In other...
Continuous Integration
Continuous integration or CI, refers to an engineering practice that is said to help automate certain pieces of work and identify bugs early in...
Continuous Deployment
In software product development, continuous deployment refers to a strategy that aims to reduce the amount of time between writing code and pushing it...
Continuous Delivery
In software product development, continuous delivery (CD) is the successful execution of continuous deployment. Whereas continuous deployment aims to reduce the amount of time...
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...
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...
D
Data Product Manager
A data product manager focuses on collecting, organizing, storing, and sharing product management data within an organization.
Design Concept
In product management, a design concept is a short description of the idea behind a planned product.
Distinctive Competence
Distinctive competence refers to a superior characteristic, strength, or quality that distinguishes a company from its competitors. This distinctive quality can be just about...
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...
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 Transformation
Digital transformation refers to the trend where businesses use digital technologies to enhance and replace existing business processes.
Dual-Track Agile
Dual-track agile is a type of agile development in which the cross-functional product team breaks its daily development work into two tracks: discovery and...
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...
Disciplined Agile (DA)
What is Disciplined Agile? Disciplined Agile (DA), is a process decision framework that puts individuals first and offers only lightweight guidance to help teams...
DEEP Backlog
A DEEP Backlog is one of the suggested objectives of a product backlog grooming session. DEEP is an acronym used to indicate a few key...
Definition of Done
In the Scrum agile framework, Definition of Done describes the requirements that must be met in order for a story to be considered complete....
Definition of Ready
In the Scrum agile framework, Definition of Ready describes the requirements that must be met in order for a story to move from the...
Dependency
In project management, a dependency describes a relationship between two initiatives that must be executed in a particular order. If Initiative A is dependent...
Design Thinking
Design thinking is a framework for innovation based on viewing problems or needs from the user’s perspective. Because this human-centered approach demands a thorough...
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...
Documentation
Explore how to document a product roadmap to help align your product team to meet their OKRs and develop a clear go-to-market plan.
DevOps
DevOps combines traditional software development and IT operations into a unified framework, merging coding, testing, packaging, integration, deployment, and monitoring into a single overarching...
Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)
The Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) is an agile framework that addresses the entire project lifecycle and its impact on the business. Like the...
E
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...
Engineering Backlog
What is an Engineering Backlog? A backlog is any list of unfinished, actionable tasks to be completed to achieve a strategic goal. The product...
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...
Enterprise Architecture Planning
What is Enterprise Architecture? Enterprise architecture is a strategic and comprehensive blueprint for how IT infrastructure will be used across an organization to help...
Enterprise Architecture Roadmap
What is an Enterprise Architecture Roadmap? An enterprise architecture roadmap is a strategic blueprint that communicates how a company’s IT plans will help the...
Eisenhower Matrix
What is the Eisenhower Matrix? The Eisenhower Matrix is a productivity, prioritization, and time-management framework designed to help you prioritize a list of tasks...
eXtreme Programming (XP)
What is eXtreme Programming? eXtreme Programming (XP) is an agile framework that emphasizes both the broader philosophy of agile—to produce higher-quality software to please...
Engineering Backlog
The engineering backlog lists and prioritizes the stories, epics, and/or initiatives that are to be worked on by the engineering team for a given...
Epic
An epic, like a theme, is typically a group of features or stories with a common strategic goal. Note that an epic is one...
F
Fundamentally New Product
A fundamentally new product gives customers the ability to do something that no existing product can.
Feature Audit
A feature audit is an exercise to give a product team a visual snapshot of how many customers use each feature in the product,...
Feature Outcome Assessment
What Is a Feature Outcome Assessment? A feature outcome assessment focuses on specific, measurable outcomes rather than product features. Why Is It Important for...
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...
Fibonacci Agile Estimation
Fibonacci agile estimation refers to using this sequence as the scoring scale when estimating the effort of agile development tasks.
Feature-Less Roadmap
What is a Feature-Less Roadmap? A feature-less roadmap is a roadmap designed to function as a strategic blueprint. Feature-less roadmaps enable product managers to...
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,...
Feature Driven Development (FDD)
What is Feature Driven Development? (FDD) Feature Driven Development (FDD) is an agile framework that, as its name suggests, organizes software development around making...
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,...
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,...
Feature Flag
A feature flag refers to a team’s ability to turn a feature or functionality “on” or “off” at their discretion. Feature flags help a...
G
Growth Product Manager
Learn what growth product managers do, how they are centric to product-led growth and what success looks like for a growth product manager.
Group Product Manager
What Is a Group Product Manager? A group product manager (GPM) is a product leader who manages the product team responsible for a particular...
Gantt Chart
A Gantt chart, or harmonogram, is a bar chart that graphically illustrates a schedule for planning, coordinating, and tracking specific tasks related to a...
GIST Planning
What is GIST planning? GIST stands for Goals, Ideas, Step-Projects, and Tasks. GIST planning is a lightweight approach to product planning, with the goal...
Go-to-Market Strategy
What is a Go-to-Market Strategy? A go-to-market strategy is a tactical plan detailing how a company plans to execute a successful product release and...
General Availability (GA)
What is General Availability? General Availability (GA) is the release of a product to the general public. When a product reaches GA, it becomes...
H
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...
HEART Framework
The HEART framework is a methodology to improve the user experience (UX) of software. The framework helps a company evaluate any aspect of its...
I
Implicit Requirements
Implicit requirements are features and characteristics of the product experience that customers will expect. This post discusses examples of implicit requirements and how they...
Intuitive Design
What Is Intuitive Design? In product management, intuitive design refers to making products easy to use. With an intuitively designed product, customers will understand...
Incremental Innovation
What Is Incremental Innovation? Incremental innovation refers to a series of small-scale improvements made to an existing product or service to add or sustain...
IT Project Manager
What Is an IT Project Manager? An IT project manager oversees complex projects involving a company’s IT infrastructure. Examples include installing computer hardware, setting...
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...
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....
Impact Mapping
Impact Mapping is a graphic strategy planning method to decide which features to build into a product. As it begins with the intended goal...
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...
ICE Scoring Model
The ICE Scoring Model is a relatively quick way to assign a numerical value to different potential projects or ideas to prioritize them based...
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...
Iteration
What is Iteration? In agile software development, an iteration is a set amount of time reserved for development. Typical iterations last 1-2 weeks, however,...
J
Jobs-To-Be-Done Framework
The jobs-to-be-done framework is an approach to developing products based on understanding both the customer’s specific goal, or “job,” and the thought processes that...
Jira
What Is Jira? Jira is a software application used for issue tracking and project management. The tool, developed by the Australian software company Atlassian,...
K
Kanban Roadmap
A Kanban roadmap can help product managers leverage the Kanban methodology in their strategic planning. The Kanban technique involves grouping initiatives into clearly marked...
Kano Model
The Kano Model is one of many prioritization frameworks designed to help product teams prioritize initiatives. Kano can help teams determine which features will...
Kanban Board
A kanban board is a type of workflow that is commonly used to manage initiatives in project management. Kanban boards can be found in...
Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are quantitative metrics organizations use to analyze and track progress toward business objectives.
L
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...
LeSS (Large Scale Scrum)
Large scale Scrum (LeSS) is a scaled-up version of the traditional, one-team Scrum. LeSS uses many principles of the Scrum agile framework but with...
Lean Software Development
What is Lean Software Development (LSD)? Lean Software Development (LSD) is an agile framework based on optimizing development time and resources, eliminating waste, and...
Lifetime Value (LTV)
Lifetime Value (LTV) is an estimate of how much revenue an account will bring in over its lifetime. LTV, when used alongside an efficiency...
M
Mockup
A mockup is a realistic visual representation of a product. In this post, we’ll discuss the role of mockups in product management and explain...
Minimum Viable Experience (MVE)
What Is a Minimum Viable Experience (MVE)? In product management, “minimum viable” refers to something the team believes it can release to the market...
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...
MoSCoW Prioritization
What is MoSCoW Prioritization? MoSCoW prioritization, also known as the MoSCoW method or MoSCoW analysis, is a popular prioritization technique for managing requirements. The...
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
Monthly recurring revenue (MRR) is a calculation of revenue generation by month and conveys an up-to-date measurement of financial health.
Market Validation
What is Market Validation? Market validation is the process of presenting a concept for a product to its target market and learn from those...
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...
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...
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...
N
Needfinding
Needfinding is a unique research process that product teams use to identify a market need before building a product. In this post, we’ll discuss...
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
What is a Net Promoter Score? A net promoter score is a method of using a single survey question to gauge customer satisfaction with...
O
Opportunity Solution Tree
What is an Opportunity Solution Tree? An Opportunity Solution Tree (OST) is a visual aid that helps enable the product discovery process through the...
Opportunity Scoring
Opportunity scoring is one of several popular strategies for prioritizing features on a product roadmap. Product teams use this strategy when they want to...
Objectives and Key Results
What are Objectives and Key Results? OKRs are a management strategy that sets up business objectives and measurable outcomes for alignment.
P
Product Adoption
What is Product Adoption? Learn more about product adoption and other product management terminology in our resources library.
Product Vulnerability
What is Product Vulnerability? A product vulnerability also referred to as a security vulnerability, is defined as an exploitable glitch, weakness, or flaw found...
Product Profitability
Product profitability refers to how much money a product makes minus what it costs to build, sell, and support it.
Product Development Cycle
What Is the Product Development Cycle? The product development cycle is the process of taking a product from an idea through its market release...
PDCA Cycle
What Is the PDCA Cycle? The PDCA cycle is a project management framework that businesses can use to implement incremental change. PDCA stands for...
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
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...
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....
Pair Programming
What Is Pair Programming? Pair programming is a practice in agile software development where two programmers share a workstation. This includes a single computer....
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 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...
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 Metrics
What Are Product Metrics? Product metrics, sometimes called key performance indicators, are quantifiable data points that an organization tracks and analyzes to gauge a...
Product Strategist
A Product Strategist identifies new opportunities, assesses the company’s product performance, and helps develop its long-term strategic plans for future product lines. This distinguishes...
Product Positioning
What Is Product Positioning? Product positioning is the process of deciding and communicating how you want your market to think and feel about your...
Product Mission
What Is a Product Mission Statement? A product’s mission is a clear, concise statement that explains the product’s highest-level purpose. It clarifies who the...
Product Specs
What Is a Product Specification? A Product Specification, commonly referred to as a product spec, is an important product document that outlines key requirements...
Product Strategy Framework
What Is a Product Strategy Framework? A product strategy is a high-level plan describing what a business hopes to accomplish with its product and...
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...
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 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 Development Manager
What is a Product Development Manager? A Product Development Manager (PDM)—often a software engineer, QA tester, or UX designer—is responsible for identifying new opportunities...
Platform Product Manager
What is a Platform Product Manager? A Platform Product Manager (PM), is one of the most challenging roles in product management. They are responsible...
Product Discovery
What is Product Discovery? The product discovery process has two distinct parts. It includes developing a profound understanding of customers, then using that knowledge...
Product Management Talent
Product leaders are responsible for discovering and recruiting the right people for the product team. To do so, they need to seek out product...
Planning Poker
Planning poker (also called Scrum poker) helps agile teams estimate the time and effort needed to complete each initiative on their product backlog.
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 Tree
What is the Product Tree? The Product Tree is a fun, visual, and useful tool that gamifies product management. It helps product managers (PMs)...
Product Excellence
What is Product Excellence? Product excellence is a customer-focused framework. The framework helps develop a significant and impactful product or feature. Achieving product excellence...
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 Disruptor
What is a Product Disruptor? A product disruptor is an innovation that represents a change in a product’s direction, business model, or value proposition....
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...
Product Strategy
What is a Product Strategy? A product strategy is a high-level plan describing what a business hopes to accomplish with its product and how...
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...
Product Analytics
What are Product Analytics? The term product analytics refers to capturing and analyzing quantitative data through embedded tools that record how users interact with...
Product Launch
What is a Product Launch? A product launch refers to a business’s planned and coordinated effort to debut a new product to the market...
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 Development Process
What Is the Product Development Process? The product development process encompasses all steps needed to take a product from concept to market availability. This...
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 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...
Project Roadmap
Project roadmaps provide a strategic overview of the major elements of a project. A project roadmap should include a project’s objectives, milestones, deliverables, resources,...
Product Design
What is Product Design? Product design describes the process of imagining, creating, and iterating products that solve users’ problems.
Product Designer
A product designer is responsible for the user experience of a product, usually taking direction on the business goals and objectives from product management....
Product-Market Fit
Product-market fit describes a scenario in which a company's target customers are buying, using, and telling others about the company's product in numbers large...
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 Owner
The product owner bridges the gap between product strategy and development. They are usually responsible for the product backlog, organizing sprints, and are expected...
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 Backlog
What is a product backlog? It lists and prioritizes task-level details required to execute the strategic plan detailed on a product roadmap.
Prioritization
Prioritization is the process by which a set of items are ranked in order of importance. In product management, initiatives that live in the...
Pivot
Pivot in a product management context may refer to a shift in the strategic direction of the business. Usually the decision to pivot a...
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...
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...
Program Manager
A program manager coordinates the interdependencies among projects, products, and other important strategic initiatives across an organization. This role requires one to focus closely...
Project Manager
A project manager oversees many of the logistical aspects of the product development process. They differ from product managers in that they oversee the...
Pair Programming
Pair programming is an agile software development practice in which two programmers team up at one workstation to maximize efficiency. With pair programming, one...
Product Portfolio Management
Product portfolio management refers to the practice of managing an organization’s entire product portfolio, which consists of all the products the organization has. A...
Product Manager
A product manager drives the development of products, and is ultimately responsible for the success of those products. Product managers are information gatherers, defining...
Product Marketing Manager
A product marketing manager’s (PMM) primary responsibility is to communicate the product’s value to the market. A PMM’s responsibilities could include training the sales...
Product Vision
A product vision, or product vision statement, describes the overarching long-term mission of your product. Vision statements are aspirational and communicate concisely where the...
Q
Quality Assurance
Quality assurance helps a business ensure its products meet the quality standards set by the company or its industry. In this post, we’ll review...
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...
R
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....
Roadmapping Tool
What Is a Roadmapping Tool? A roadmap is a strategic blueprint that captures and communicates the basic plan and goals for a project. A...
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...
Retention Rate
Why is the retention rate so important? It is used to determine the percentage of customers who continue paying for a product over time.
Retention
What Is Retention? Customer retention refers to a company’s or product’s ability to retain customers over time. If a company or product has high...
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...
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...
RICE Scoring Model
The RICE scoring model is a framework designed to help product managers determine which products, features, and other initiatives to prioritize on their roadmaps...
Rapid Application Development (RAD)
What is Rapid Application Development (RAD)? Rapid Application Development is an agile framework focused primarily on rapid prototyping of software products, frequently iterating based...
Roadmap
What is a Roadmap? Definition: A roadmap is a high-level strategic document that is created and maintained to communicate the strategic vision and objectives...
Rapid Prototyping
Rapid prototyping is an agile strategy used throughout the product development process. With this approach, 3-dimensional prototypes of a product or feature are created...
Rapid Experimentation
Rapid experimentation is an agile approach to the product development process. With this approach, frequent experiments are deployed in an attempt to discover new,...
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...
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 Demo
What is a Release Demo? Definition: A release demo is typically given by agile teams at the end of a sprint. These demos are...
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...
Retrospective
A retrospective is a meeting held after a product ships to discuss what happened during the product development and release process, with the goal...
S
Story Points
Learn how story points can help teams create a shared understanding about the overall effort each task will take.
Stakeholder Management
Stakeholder management refers to identifying, prioritizing, and engaging stakeholders throughout the product development process.
Sunk Cost
A sunk cost is an investment that can’t be recovered. Examples of sunk costs in business include marketing, research, new software installation or equipment,...
Scrumban
What Is Scrumban? Scrumban is a project management framework that combines important features of two popular agile methodologies: Scrum and Kanban. The Scrumban framework...
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,...
Shipyard Engine
What is a Shipyard Engine? A shipyard engine describes a product team’s process to keep its organization informed about the frequent updates the team...
Shape Up Method
What is the Shape Up Method? The Shape Up Method describes the specific processes used by product development teams to shape, bet, and build...
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...
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...
Story Mapping
What is Story Mapping? Story mapping is a method for arranging user stories to create a more holistic view of how they fit into...
Scrum Agile Framework
What is Scrum Agile Framework? In an agile context, Scrum is an approach to project management. Typically the Scrum agile framework favors moving projects...
Scaled Agile Framework
What is the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)? The Scaled Agile Framework, or SAFe, is an agile framework developed for development teams. Most importantly, SAFE’s...
Story Point
What is a Story Point? A story point is a unit of measurement used by development teams to estimate the amount of effort required...
Stakeholder
What are Stakeholders? Stakeholders are individuals (or groups) that can either impact the success and execution or are impacted by a product. The first...
Sprint Planning
What is Sprint Planning? In the Scrum agile framework, a sprint planning meeting is an event that establishes the product development goal and plan...
Sprint Goal
What is a Sprint Goal? In the scrum methodology for agile, sprint goals are clear objectives set before the beginning of a sprint. They...
Sprint Backlog
What is a Sprint Backlog? A sprint backlog is the set of items that a cross-functional product team selects from its product backlog to...
Sprint
What is an Agile Sprint? In agile methodology, a sprint is a period (e.g., 14 days) in which an agreed-upon set of development tasks...
Scrum Meeting
What Is a Scrum Meeting? Scrum is an agile framework that teams use to produce products faster by breaking large development projects into smaller...
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...
Scrum Master
A scrum master is a facilitator for an agile team working under the scrum methodology. The scrum master serves as a point person responsible...
Standup
What is a Standup? A daily standup is a quick session where each member of the team shares what they accomplished yesterday, what they’ll...
T
Turnover Rate
What Does Turnover Rate Mean? For a product or marketing team, turnover rate refers to the percentage of customers lost over a period of...
Timeline Roadmap
What Is a Timeline Roadmap? A timeline roadmap serves several strategic purposes. First, it communicates the priority order of a team’s initiatives based on...
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...
The 4 Ds of Time Management
What are the 4 Ds of Time Management? The 4 Ds of time management, sometimes referred to as the 4 Ds of productivity, is...
Tribe Model Management
What is Tribe Model Management? Tribe model management is part of an agile scaling strategy first used to help Spotify’s growing development department. The...
Total Addressable Market (TAM)
Total Addressable Market (TAM) refers to the maximum size of the opportunity for a particular product or solution.
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...
Theme
What Is a Theme? In product management, a theme is a high-level goal or plan for the product. The theme sits at the top...
Technical Product Manager
A technical product manager (PM) is a product manager with a strong technical background that is typically focused on the more technical aspects of...
Top-Down Product Strategy
What is a Top-Down Product Strategy? Definition: A top-down product strategy is one where high-level objectives and a long-term vision are defined first and...
U
User Flow
What Is a User Flow? A user flow is a chart or diagram showing the path a user will take in an application to...
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...
UX Designer
The primary focus of a UX designer (short for User Experience Designer) is on overall user satisfaction and usability with a product. UX designers...
Unique Selling Proposition
A product’s unique selling proposition (USP), is its unique competitive advantage, or the reason a customer would select the product over any other option....
User Story
A user story is a small, self-contained unit of development work designed to accomplish a specific goal within a product. A user story is...
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 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 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...
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...
Usability Testing
Usability testing refers to a technique to evaluate the difficulting of finding a company's product. Learn the 7 steps of usability testing.
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Value vs. Complexity
Value vs. complexity is a prioritization framework that allows a product team to evaluate each initiative according to how much value the initiative will...
Value Proposition
What is a Value Proposition? A value proposition is a statement that identifies measurable benefits prospective customers can expect when buying a product or...
Vanity Metrics
What Are Vanity Metrics? Vanity metrics are statistics that look spectacular on the surface but don’t necessarily translate to any meaningful business results. Examples...
Velocity
Velocity is a metric used to measure the speed of a development team’s delivery for a given cycle. Velocity is a calculation of the...
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...
W
Working Backwards (the Amazon Method)
The Amazon working backward method is a product development approach that starts with the team imagining the product is ready to ship.
Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF)
What is Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF)? Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) is a tool used in the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) to help...
What is a Backlog
A backlog is a list of task-level details required to execute on a larger strategic plan. A quick glance at a prioritized backlog conveys...
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...
Weighted Scoring
Weighted scoring prioritization uses numerical scoring to rank your strategic initiatives against benefit and cost categories. It is useful for product teams looking for...
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...
