Glossary
Check out our glossary of common product management terms and definitions.
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Agile Release Train
What is an agile release train? An Agile Release Train (ART) is a feature of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). It is a long-term, dedicated cross-functional team that works toward a singular goal. The train is made up of multiple agile teams. They work on a fixed...
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 useful and will walk you through how to build your own.
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. Companies that offer yearly subscriptions use this metric to determine how much revenue they can expect each 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 making sure the company derives as much value as possible from the team’s work. You can think of an agile...
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 be tracking: acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue. Acquisition (or awareness) - How are...
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 which order. You create this matrix using two components. First, draw a graph that measures effort along the x-axis and impact along...
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 understanding what it is not: adopting agile software development methodologies.
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 testing but has a similar purpose. These tests are most commonly run in the software industry.
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 people before processes, getting software out the door fast, collaborating with customers, and adjusting plans as needed.
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 changes.
Acceptance Test
What is an acceptance test? Learn more about acceptance testing and other agile practices and terminology in our agile glossary.
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. Acceptance criteria are also sometimes called the “definition of done.”
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 to identify the best-performing option.
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 establish the tenets of the agile mindset.
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 February 2001.
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 Notes.
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 and effectively adapt to changing requirements or market needs.
Agile Framework
An agile framework is one of many documented software-development approaches based on the agile philosophy articulated in the Agile Manifesto.
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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 in order of importance, first by category and then by specific items within each category. Karuna Sehgal, a full-stack web...
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 take into account that people make irrational decisions. Keeping this in...
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, processes, and technology. These transformations help organizations compete more effectively,...
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 change, hasten the time to market, and reduce costs without sacrificing quality. Agile development...
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 stakeholders value the most. Product managers can leverage Buy-a-Feature to directly engage stakeholders and even customers to help shape their products, and to prioritize features based on their expected value return.
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 a backlog grooming session is to ensure the next few sprints worth of user stories in the backlog are prepared for sprint planning. Regular backlog grooming sessions also help ensure the right stories are prioritized and that the product backlog does not become a black hole.
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 research across a wide range of sources — including industry reports, customer feedback, actual usage data of the company’s products, and competitive research.
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 needed in their necessary quantities.
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 typical use case for this tool is to outline the fundamental building blocks of a business, but it can be used effectively for individual products as well.
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. This can include a number of influencers and decision makers who might not even be using the product upon purchasing. Aside from being a larger demographic, this persona will likely differ from the user persona in regards to their goals and needs.
Burndown Chart
What is a burndown chart and how are they used? Learn more about burndown charts and other terminology in our product management glossary.
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 feedback to help the product team improve it before general availability. If both forms of testing are deployed, beta testing occurs once alpha testing is complete.
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Customer Feedback
What is customer feedback? Customer feedback is information from those who buy and use your product. Moreover, product managers, designers, marketers, and salespeople, depend on customer feedback to understand how to improve their product and messaging to succeed in...
Competitive Intelligence
What is Competitive Intelligence? Competitive intelligence is defined as data-driven insight into the competitive landscape of your target market. Consequently, it breaks down where your competitors are and where they’re headed. Furthermore, it’s an essential skill...
Change Enablement
What Is Change Enablement? Change enablement, called change management, refers to providing people with the necessary information and support–alongside tools, processes, and strategies– to help them adapt and transition to change within an organization. Whether it be...
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 is the method a company uses to get a product or service into the hands of a consumer as efficiently as possible.
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 includes suggesting ideas to improve efficiencies, evaluating current processes, and finding...
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. But the term does not have a single, recognized definition. Many product management authorities offer certificate...
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 concept to market availability.) It tests assumptions and hypotheses about the customer problem, target market, and...
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 feel about the company. Several departments across an organization will communicate with customers at...
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 an organization. Changes may be internal (e.g., migrating to a new software...
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 any design question. The seven linear steps of the process form the CIRCLES acronym: Comprehend the situation;...
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 later.
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 organization. Alternatively, the CPO is known as VP of product or head of product. A CPO is responsible for the strategic 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 further context by viewing things from their perspective. Product managers utilize customer...
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 impact Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) and can also indicate dissatisfaction with a product or service.
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 words, this framework is a direct outgrowth of one of the core values articulated in the Agile Manifesto. The Crystal...
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 stages and steps such as the “first touch,” information-gathering process, sales interactions, buying decision etc.
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 that the proposed solution will indeed meet customer needs and demand. Customer development runs...
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. Usually, the members of a customer advisory board are high-level executives at their organizations and therefore can provide in-depth market insight.
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 common way to discover whether or not a company is operating efficiently.
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 the process. Engineers practicing continuous integration merge their code to a shared repository several times each day. That code is then passed through several automated tests to help identify any errors.
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 live. Common practices under this agile-inspired strategy may include automated testing and automated releases.
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 between writing code and pushing it live, CD is the process by which these efforts...
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 of a product manager, product owner, scrum master, engineers, QA, and design.
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Dependency Management
Dependency management is the process of tracking and minimizing disruptions between dependencies. Effective dependency management can reduce risks and increase the likelihood that your product launch will go according to plan.
Daily Scrum
What is a daily scum? Daily scrums are quick meetings held each day for the members of the product development team working on a sprint.
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 anything—innovation, design, technology, name recognition, etc.
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 holds this responsibility for digital products. These include software tools, apps, or any product developed and...
Design Ops
What is design ops, and why should you adapt it for your culture? Learn the basics of design ops and how to incorporate it into your team.
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 where the cross-functional product team breaks its daily development work into two tracks: discovery and delivery.
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 responsibilities when it comes to group decisions.
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 optimize their processes according to the unique needs of each specific project. As a people-first agile...
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. This concept differs from acceptance criteria in that it is a wide-ranging set of requirements that can apply to all items in the backlog (i.e. quality).
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 traits of an effective product backlog.
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.
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 model which eventually "disrupts" an existing one.
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 understanding of what your customers both think and feel, the design thinking process requires you...
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 on Initiative B, then Initiative B must be completed first. This situation frequently comes up in...
Definition of Ready
Definition of Ready describes the requirements that must be met in order for a story to move from the backlog to development. In keeping with agile tradition, Ready is often defined as a story that can be acted on immediately.
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 process to decrease time to market without sacrificing quality.
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 broader agile philosophy, DSDM is an iterative approach to software development, and this framework explicitly...
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Enterprise Feedback Management
What is enterprise feedback management? Enterprise feedback management (EFM) describes the processes and software used to collect and manage customer feedback at an enterprise-level organization. EFM gives an organization – departments like product management,...
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 to purchase are shifting from company executives. Instead, it's the employees who will use these software tools to do...
Enterprise Transformation
What Is Enterprise Transformation? Enterprise transformation refers to a fundamental change in the way a business operates. Consequently, this could include a change to an organization’s core technology, the way the company structures its teams, or how it develops and...
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 meet that organization’s goals. According to the professional association Enterprise Architecture...
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 organization achieve its business objectives. These roadmaps can be developed for initiatives such as:...
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 or agenda items by first categorizing those items according to their urgency and importance. Also...
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 customers—and the more specific goal of making life better for the engineers developing it....
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 sprint. Typical items in an engineering backlog include stories, bug fixes, and other engineering-related tasks.
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 level of detail below a theme, considering a theme might be comprised of several related epics.
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Feature Release
What is a feature release? Whereas a product release is focused on the introduction of an entirely new offering to the market, the term feature release refers to the rollout of new or updated functionalities within an existing product. The possible goals of a feature...
Finance Product Manager
What is a finance product manager? Like a product manager in any other industry, a finance product manager is responsible for the success of a product or portfolio of products. There are some unique aspects of financial industry products, however, that requires a...
Feedback Management
What is feedback management? Feedback management collects user feedback to identify opportunities to improve a product or service. Product teams who regularly listen to what users say about their pain points, needs, successes, failures, and wishes for future products...
Feature Creep
What is feature creep? Learn more about feature creeep and other product management terminology in our resources library.
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, and how often.
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 Product Management? Focusing on outcomes rather than features requires a close connection to customers and...
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 rather than solving problems for customers. Here are a few characteristics of a feature factory: The product...
Fibonacci Agile Estimation
Fibonacci agile estimation refers to using this sequence as the scoring scale when estimating the effort of agile development tasks.
5 Ws and H
What Does 5 Ws and H Mean? The term 5 Ws and H refers to the six basic questions to ask when gathering information or solving a problem. The questions are: 1. Who? 2. What? 3. Where? 4. When? 5. Why? 6. How? The goal of this technique is to gain a factual answer to...
Feature-Less Roadmap
How can your team be more outcome focused? Transition to a feature-less roadmap to ship initiatives that provide real user value.
Feature Kickoff
A product feature kickoff is a meeting in which a product manager and stakeholders set plans, goals, and responsibilities for a new feature.
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 progress on features. Features in the FDD context, though, are not necessarily product features in...
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, this term is reserved for products that have become overloaded with extra "bells and whistles" features and are no longer...
Features
What are product features? Learn more about product features and other product management terminology in our resources library.
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 number of teams across an organization like product marketing, engineering, UX/UI, etc.
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Goal-Question-Metrics (GQMs)
Goal-Question-Metrics (GQMs) is a strategic framework used to define goals, ask relevant questions, and improve metrics. GQMs empower product managers to clarify purpose, align their team, and track progress with measurable metrics.
Greenfield Project
A greenfield project can describe any project that a team starts from scratch. Learn the pros and common pitfalls of a greenfield project.
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 group of products. Notably, this role is described as a player/coach role. A GPM brings together the aspects of being an...
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 single project.
GIST Planning
GIST planning is to only build products and solutions with the objectives of the organization in mind. So how can you use GIST planning?
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 promotion, and ultimately its sale to customers. Common elements of a product’s go-to-market strategy include: Pricing...
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 available through the company’s general sales channel — as opposed to a limited release, or beta version, used primarily...
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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 customers. The goal is to result in voluntary, high-frequency engagement. At its core, the Hook Model is about creating a customer...
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 user experience according to five user-centered metrics.
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In-App Messaging
What is in-app messaging? Learn more about in-app messaging and other product management terminology in our resources library.
IT Management
What is IT Management? Information Technology (IT) management is the monitoring and administration of an organization’s information technology systems and resources. The department manages hardware, software, networks, and data. Managing your organization's IT...
Innovation Management
What is innovation management? There are many definitions of innovation management. At its core, innovation management is the process of putting something new into practice. Moreover, many good ideas have the potential to positively impact the business. However, they...
Information Technology
What is information technology? Information technology (IT) is the hardware and software used to create, store, transmit, manipulate, and display information and data. Metaphorically, it is the lifeblood of the Information Age. On a high level, it is anything and...
Ideation
What is ideation? Ideation is an intentional exercise to generate a high volume of ideas for a business’s products, services, and customer experience. Unlike “free-for-all” brainstorming sessions, these exercises remain structured and guided by a product team member....
Incident Management Practice
What is incident management practice? Incident management practice is the process of identifying and resolving unplanned incidents (often referred to as major incidents by teams following ITIL or ITSM practices). Types of incidents vary – from unplanned customer...
Idea Backlog
An idea backlog is a list of ideas that need more discussion or vetting before a product team can decide whether to move forward with them. In this article, we’ll discuss when and why to place items on an idea backlog, and we’ll walk you through creating and maintaining your own.
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 fit into product development.
Intuitive Design
Intuitive design refers to making products easy to use. In this post, we’ll discuss why intuitive design is important and how to do it.
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 value. Rather than introducing a potentially risky brand-new product, this product strategy entails modifying...
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 up networks, and rolling out cybersecurity systems. There is a key difference between an IT...
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 wide range of industries. You might also know IoT products as smart devices or internet-enabled devices. IoT product managers drive the business strategy and development of these products.
Information Flows in Product Management
Information flows in product management is a two-step process for creating a shared understanding of product strategy.
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 and extends out from there, all identified features have a direct impact on achieving that goal and a clear rationale for how...
Idea Management
Idea management is a structured approach to generating and evaluating ideas that could help improve an organization’s bottom line.
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 on their relative value, using three parameters: Impact, Confidence, and Ease. What is the ICE Scoring Model? ICE Scoring is...
Iterative Testing
Learn the definition and best practices of iterative testing. Discover the 6 reasons product managers need to conduct iterative testing.
Iteration
What is an iteration? An iteration is a set amount of time (typically 1-2 weeks) reserved for development in agile software development.
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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 would lead that customer to “hire” a product to complete the job.
Jira
What Is Jira? Jira is a software application developed by the Australian software company Atlassian that allows teams to track issues, manage projects, and automate workflows. Key Jira concepts Jira is based on four key concepts: issue, project, board, and workflow....
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Kanban Roadmap
What is a Kanban Roadmap? Learn how a Kanban roadmap can help product managers leverage the Kanban methodology in their strategic planning.
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 satisfy and even delight customers. Product managers often use the Kano Model to prioritize potential new features by grouping them into categories. These feature categories can range from those that could disappoint customers, to those likely to satisfy or even delight customers.
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 a number of popular tools such as Trello, and some product teams prefer to display their roadmaps in a kanban style view.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are quantitative metrics organizations use to analyze and track progress toward business objectives.
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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 common definitions of this role are: The senior product manager is responsible for a complex product made up of several...
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 differences
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 ultimately delivering only what the product needs. The Lean approach is also often referred to as...
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 metric like Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), is a critical metric when gauging the cost efficiency of a given acquisition strategy.
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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 the difference in mockups meaning from wireframes and prototypes.
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 to gain useful feedback. Product teams aim for a minimum viable product (MVP) to balance building enough functionality...
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 recipe for accomplishing a business task. Businesses use MOPs to remove the guesswork and reduce human error. A company might write a MOP...
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 acronym MoSCoW represents four categories of initiatives: must-have, should-have,...
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 prospective buyers whether or not the idea is worth pursuing. This process typically takes place early-on in the conception...
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 to attract early-adopter customers and validate an idea. In industries such as software, or for companies with limited funding, the MVP can help the product team receive user feedback as quickly as possible, which they can use to iterate and improve the product.
Minimum Viable Feature (MVF)
What is a minimum viable feature? Learn more about more product management terminology in our resources library.
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 for a specific product. An MRD typically contains information on the product’s vision, the competitive landscape, a business analysis and revenue opportunity, as well as a list of features or at least high-level feature categories.
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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 how needfinding differs from other customer research, why product teams should try it, and the steps to do it successfully.
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 a product. Businesses can send out this question— “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [our product or company]?”—at...
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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 non-linear organization of ideation flows, experimentation, and identification of gaps. Simply put, an OST is a visual...
Opportunity Scoring
Product teams use opportunity scoring as one of several popular strategies for prioritizing features on a product roadmap.
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.
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Problem Statement
A problem statement describes a specific issue or opportunity in the market. It is crafted to guide focused efforts in finding solutions. For product teams, having a well-defined and researched problem statement can be crucial to the success of their product...
Product Management Platform
A product management platform is a tool that helps companies plan, develop, and launch products. A product management platform can give teams the ability to plan strategy, communicate in real-time, create roadmaps, manage resources, or share information with key stakeholders.
Product Onboarding
What is product onboarding? Learn more about product onboarding and other product management terminology in our resources library.
Product-Led Culture
Just as a farmer can’t grow a thriving, highly productive garden without fertile, nutrient-rich soil, it’s not possible to have a successful product-led organization without creating a product-led culture. To make sure we’re speaking the same language, let’s level set...
Product-Led Organization
What is a company if not a vehicle for delivering products that meet customer needs? Whether that product is a software application, a physical doo-dad of some kind, or a service like consulting or transportation, or warehousing, every company provides some value to...
Product Planning
What is Product Planning? Product Planning is researching, making decisions, and taking action to develop a successful product. Consequently, the result is a clear product plan that outlines things like strategic themes, feature priorities, pricing, deliverable...
Product Launch Timeline
Product launch timelines visually represent the project plan to successfully release new products. The goal of the timeline is to ensure a successful product launch that improves the brand image, expands the customer base, generates buzz, and ultimately leads to...
Product Sense
What is product sense? Learn more about product sense and other product management terminology in our resource library!
Product Critique
What is a Product Critique A product critique objectively analyzes a product’s functionality, design, and user experience. A product critique aims to understand if a product is meeting its goals and working well for users. Effectively critiquing a product is an...
Product Launch Manager
What is a Product Launch Manager? A product launch manager coordinates all efforts across the company related to releasing new products to the market. In the lead-up to a product launch, many teams—product management, sales, marketing, development, customer success,...
Product Council
A product council is a group of stakeholders that meets regularly to review the strategy and progress of a product.
Product-Centric
Product-centric describes a company focused on the details of its products above other considerations, including its customers’ needs.
Product Optimization
What is product optimization? Product optimization is the process of refining a product to make it more valuable to current users.
Product Launch Management
What is Product Launch Management? Product launch management is the process of coordinating all strategic efforts needed for a successful market release. Product launch strategies differ by company and industry, but some of the common components include: Building the...
Product Consolidation
What is product consolidation and how can it affect your team? Learn how product consolidation can create a better user experience.
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 in a product or service. Furthermore, the flaw opens the door to a potential attack that could compromise...
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 and beyond. This cycle involves many departments in a company: product managers, developers, designers, QA testers, and...
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 plan, do, check, and act. This four-step approach is the most widely used methodology for implementing continuous...
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 to a product’s growth or decline— with the process lifecycle, the progression towards a more...
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 as a physical item you find in a store or order through Amazon. In reality, the term product refers to a much broader range of...
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. With this model, a business offers users free access to its product with the expectation that the product itself will...
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. One programmer (called the driver) writes the code while the other (the observer) watches, reviews, and...
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 lines within its offerings that have the greatest potential for growth, market share, and revenue. Product Line vs. 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 with the organization’s overall strategy. A PPM tells a broader solution story to the market that explains...
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. The name PERT is an acronym for Project (or Program) Evaluation and Review Technique. How Is a PERT Chart Different from a Gantt Chart? PERT...
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’s success. Examples include conversion rate, churn rate, and monthly recurring revenue....
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 the role from the Product Manager (PM), although the two will work together....
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. Successful product positioning requires your team to articulate: How your product can solve your customer’s...
Product Mission
A product’s mission plays a key role in distilling the “why” of a product. Here are 10 steps to craft your mission.
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 for building a new feature, functionality, or product. Like a blueprint, a product spec contains key...
Product Strategy Framework
A product strategy framework is a high-level plan of what a product team hopes to accomplish in a given timeframe.
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 to embed in their products a wide range of tools that can lead both to a better product experience for users...
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 leader can include building and overseeing the right product team, owning the product’s...
Product Brief
A product brief is an effective tool for product development. Read more to learn how how to write a successful product brief.
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 for developing a new marketable product from concept to distribution. They are also...
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 for prioritizing and supporting the work of multiple consumer-facing products and providing a cohesive vision across...
Product Discovery
Product discovery helps product teams decide which features or products to prioritize and build. Learn the 7 steps to implement this process.
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 management talent, to fill key product roles.
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. It plays a significant role in how to design, make, sell, use, and repair a new product...
Product Tree
What is product tree prioritization? Learn more about product tree prioritization, its benefits, and other product management terminology in our resources library.
Product Excellence
Product excellence is a customer-focused framework for developing a significant products or features and getting it to market quickly.
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 process of providing the sales team the resources they need to sell more effectively. Product...
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. The term is borrowed from industry disruptor. That concept describes an innovation (Uber, for example) that...
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 market. The term is borrowed from the development community, which often describes its team’s toolkits as their development...
Product Strategy
What is Product Strategy? Learn more about product strategy and get a free template to effectively guide your own strategy.
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 or common area of impact. This programmatic grouping of multiple projects provides synergy,...
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 a product. This type of usage data can include the most frequently accessed features of a product, the...
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 and make that product generally available for purchase. A product launch serves many purposes for an organization— giving customers...
Product Requirements Management
Product requirements management is the ongoing process of overseeing the requirements needed to deliver a product to the market.
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 includes identifying a market need, researching the competitive landscape, conceptualizing a solution,...
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 own characteristics, demands, and challenges.
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 release to the development and testing teams. This document is typically used more in “waterfall” environments where product definition, design and delivery happen sequentially, but may be used in an “agile” setting as well.
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, and planned timeline.
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. Although typically associated with the visual/tactile aspects of a product, product designers can sometimes also play a role in the information architecture and system design of a product as well.
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 enough to sustain that product’s growth and profitability.
Product Management Audit
What is a product management audit? Learn more about the purpose of a product management audit and how to conduct your own
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 to be available to answer questions from developers as needed. In comparison to the strategy-focused role of the product manager, the product owner generally takes on more tactical duties.
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 the market. This tactic aims to help businesses develop a competitive advantage and define compelling,...
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.
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Quality Assurance
What is quality assurance vs. quality control? Learn how QA helps a business ensure its products meet the standards set by the company.
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 customer needs and expectations into technical requirements by listening to the voice of customer.
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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. You tweak, update, and adjust the roadmap throughout the calendar year. However, the promise and possibilities that...
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 roadmapping tool can be used to create, update, and share this document, typically in a visual way. What Are the Different Types of...
Roadmap Milestones
Roadmap milestones are dates signaling events or deadlines the team needs to be aware of. Learn our two recommended roadmap milestones tips.
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 customer retention, it means that customers return to purchase or continue using a product or service. If a company or...
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 a software release within the company, including planning, testing, and deploying the application. Release...
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 software industry, this approach offers a framework to strategically plan, iteratively develop,...
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 by scoring these items according to four factors.
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 on feedback, and continuously releasing updated versions of those products to the...
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, innovative ideas. Experiments can range in severity, from simple A/B tests to larger field experiments.
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 and tested in an attempt to optimize characteristics like shape, size, and overall usability.
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 of a product. Roadmaps are used by managers in a number of fields, such as product, IT, and marketing.
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 it. Refactoring is intended to not make any noticeable impact on the user’s end, but can make it easier for development teams to continue working on the code and adding new functionalities in the future.
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 used to share the work that's been completed during a given sprint. Depending on the organization, release demos may include a small group of...
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 or a product update (e.g., recent changes, feature enhancements, or bug fixes). It very briefly describes a new 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 release. A release plan usually spans only a few months and is typically an internal working document for product and...
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 of improving things in the future based on those learnings and conversations.
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Service Transformation
What is Service Transformation? Service transformation refers to the process of expanding an organization's focus to include new service offerings in addition to their product offering. When an organization decides to broaden their services portfolio, they not only...
Shadow IT
What is Shadow IT? Shadow IT is a catch-all for any technology used within a corporate environment. The use of the technology typically outside the purview of the company’s “official” information technology department. What are the Risks of Shadow IT? Shadow IT may be...
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, salaries and benefits, or facilities expenses.
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 merges the structure and predictable routines of Scrum with Kanban's flexibility to make teams...
SMART Goal Setting
What is SMART goal setting? The SMART framework provides the framework for setting clear, attainable goals in project management. The acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. A SMART goal incorporates all of these elements to...
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 ships. It was coined by the B2B SaaS company Drift. This maker of conversational-marketing software operates under a...
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 meaningful products. It gives teams language and specific techniques to address the risks and unknowns at each stage of product...
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 SWOT is an acronym for these four factors.In a SWOT analysis, a project’s (or product’s) strengths and weaknesses are internal factors. Strengths might include the company’s domain expertise or intellectual property. Weaknesses might include missing skillsets or a lack of budget. Opportunities and threats, by contrast, are external and refer to competition, the market, or changing trends that could affect the company.
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 in the project; and determining how best to involve and communicate each of these stakeholder groups throughout.
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 the overall user experience. Arranged on a horizontal axis, the fundamental steps of the customer journey (sometimes labeled as epics,...
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 forward via short-term blocks of work called sprints, which are usually confined to two-week intervals. Teams...
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 foundation consists of three metaphorical pillars: Team, Program, and Portfolio. Furthermore, SAFe gives a...
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 include more goals, tasks, or requirements. Teams should always be mindful of the threat of scope creep and remain vigilant...
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 pieces that can be completed in short timeframes. Scrum meeting is a catch-all term that can describe different types of...
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 takes place. The agile methodology embraces short, frequent bursts of development, and iterative product releases. In contrast to more...
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 work on during the upcoming sprint. Typically the team will agree on these items during its sprint planning session. In fact, the...
Sprint Goal
What is a sprint goal? Learn how sprint goals play a role in the product development process and discover related topics in our glossary.
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 for the upcoming sprint, based on the team’s review of its product backlog. A successful session will yield two...
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 “upstream” category includes everyone who must contribute to or approve the activities required to design, build,...
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 to execute an item in the backlog. Since not all developers work at the same pace, this measurement system helps create a standardized...
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 for understanding the big development picture of each sprint.
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 try to accomplish today, and what is blocking work from progressing. Standups are a critical element of the agile development...
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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 time. For a SaaS company, the turnover rate will include both customers who actively cancel their subscriptions and simply don’t...
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 when they plan to begin working on each one. Second, it communicates how long the team expects to spend on each...
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 so intuitive and straightforward that even someone under the influence of alcohol could use them. The term also describes the...
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 a popular strategy for discerning whether or not a task or project is worth your time. It involves making a quick decision about what to act on now...
2×2 Prioritization Matrix
What is a 2x2 Prioritization matrix? The 2x2 prioritization method gives professionals and teams a visual framework to identify which projects to work on next. The method consists of drawing a priority matrix grid with four quadrants. The vertical axis is labeled...
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 approach involves breaking engineering teams into autonomous “squads” that work together on specific aspects of...
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 need to be refactored. In other words, it’s the result of prioritizing speedy delivery over perfect code.
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 of the strategic hierarchy on the product roadmap. Each theme is built on a set of related but narrower strategic plans called epics. Epics, in...
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 the product. A technical PM works more closely with the engineering team than the business, sales, and marketing teams...
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 then used to inform what follows. In top-down planning, the roadmap conveys the strategy but is not built and...
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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 complete a task. Product teams build user flows to intuitive design products, present the correct information to users at the right time, and allow users 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 a product, or by using other data-driven strategies.
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 continually look for ways to improve how the product experience feels to the user — improvements such as making using the product faster, easier, or more intuitive.
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. Generally, USPs are communicated as benefits to the customer or user.
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 usually written from the user’s perspective and follows the format: “As [a user persona], I want [to perform this action] so that [I can accomplish this goal].”
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, and goals of the people who will be using a product.
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 interface, or UI, to control or operate the product or machine they are using.
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 anything from how well the user can navigate the product, how easy it is to use, how relevant the content displayed is etc.
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 product to achieve a specific goal. Product managers often employ use cases to explain how and why customers will use various...
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 bring, and how difficult or complex it will be to implement. Initiatives are then plotted on a quadrant and prioritized accordingly.
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 service. When done well, it serves as a competitive differentiator. It motivates potential customers to choose...
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 include the number of social media followers or the number of views on a promotional video. While...
Velocity
What is velocity in product management? Discover the definition and when agile development teams use velocity in their sprint cycles.
Voice of Customer (VoC)
Voice of the customer, or VoC, is the research and analytics that capture customers' needs, wants, expectations, preferences, and dislikes. It can also refer to feedback in the form of customer needs, requests, and pain points. VoC’s roots lie in product management....
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What Is a Product Operating Model?
Product operating models help teams deliver the greatest value to customers, by centering it around the product’s functions and operations.
What Is a Product Engagement Score?
What is a product engagement score (PES)? It measures how a user interacts with your product and helps define the customer experience.
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 teams prioritize a list of initiatives. A team calculates each initiative’s score as the cost of delay divided by the job’s size...
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 the next items on a project’s to-do list.
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 or products. Requirements are meticulously defined upfront and implemented sequentially in...
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 objective prioritization techniques that factor in multiple layers of data.
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 of it as a low-fidelity, functional sketch. Product designers and UX (user experience) professionals draw up wireframes to...
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