Product Glossary

Product Glossary

Common product management terms and definitions

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A/B Test

Also known as split-run testing, this is a user research testing method whereby participants are shown one of two segments of a variable and comparing them against one another to determine which of the two is most effective.

AARRR Framework

This is also known as the ""AARRR Pirate Metrics Framework.

AC: Acceptance Criteria

Used in agile, they are a set of documented requirements that are predefined and determine when a user story is complete.

API: Application Programming Interface

A software intermediary that enables two applications to talk to one another.

ARR: Annual Recurring Revenue

A relied upon metrics by SaaS businesses (software as a service) that shows the expected revenue per year over the life of a contract or a subscription.

Acceptance Testing

Testing a product to determine if it passes the specified requirements to be considered "done”.

Actionable metrics

Metrics that provide insights into the performance of your feature, product, service, or business, and can be acted upon to make improvements.

Adoption

When customers choose to continuously use a product that fits their specific needs.

Affinity diagram

A helpful method used to understand large groups of information when there is mixed data.

Agile

An iterative approach to software development with the purpose of quickly delivering value to customers and enabling teams to respond to change.

Agile Manifesto

Published by the founders of the "Agile Alliance", the Agile Manifesto documents the four key values of Agile along with the 12 principles that the authors believed should guide the work of software developers.

Alpha test

Alpha testing is performed by internal employees with the goal to identify all potential issues and errors in a product that should be resolved before release.

Application

A set of code packaged together that enables people to perform an activity.

B2B: Business-to-Business

When a business offers its products or services directly to other businesses.

B2C: Business-to-Consumer

When a business offers its products or services directly to consumers.

BI: Business Intelligence

A process utilizing technology to analyze data and deliver actionable insights that can enable business leaders to make data-driven decisions to reach product and business goals.

Backend

A software development term that refers to the part of a program that users do not see (the frontend is the part of the program that users see and interact with, everything on the screen).

Backlog

A prioritized list of requirements for the development team to address to improve a product.

Backlog grooming

The act of product owners regularly reviewing the development backlog to ensure that it is up to date, the most important items are surfaced, and important work is prepared for upcoming sprints.

Beta test

Testing a product with a group of real users to ensure product quality prior to final release.

Brand equity

A term used to describe the value of a brand to a customer.

Break-even point

This is the point where the total revenue of your product equals the total costs.

Bugs

An error in the codebase that causes the program to deliver an incorrect or unexpected result to the end user.

Burndown chart

A chart that depicts how quickly a team is working through the users stories for a given sprint.

Business Model Canvas

Created by Alexander Osterwalder this visual tool helps business leaders understand their business model (or that of a competitor).

Business case

The justification for why a particular initiative should be taken.

Business model

The plan for how a business intends on making money.

Business plan

A written document that contains the objectives of a business and in detail, with supporting information, how it plans to accomplish these objectives.

Buy a feature

A prioritization exercise where participants are required to pay for the features they believe are the most valuable.

CLV: Customer Lifetime Value

Also referred to as Lifetime Value, this is the total amount of money that you expect a customer will spend on your products, services, or in your business, during their lifetime as a customer.

CPO: Chief Product Officer

A corporate title for the individual who leads the entire product strategy, execution, and product team for a corporation.

Cannibalization

When a company experiences a loss in sales due to launching a product in the market to the same target market.

Cash flow

The flow of cash that moves in and out of a business.

Churn rate

The total number of customers who decide to stop using your product within a given time period.

Competitive advantage

An understanding of what gives your product or business an edge over the competitors in your market.

Competitive analysis

An analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of your product (and company (against those of the competitors in your market.

Complete product experience

The entire experience that a customer has throughout their journey with a product and business.

Concept review

Sharing and assessing various concepts with the goal of determining which one(s) your team will invest further time and energy into.

Continuous delivery

A software development term that refers to when changes to the code base (new features, enhancements, bug fixes) are automatically deployed to an environment (like a staging environment).

Continuous deployment

A software development term that refers to when code that passes automated tests are immediately pushed to production for customers and users to experience the benefits.

Continuous integration

A software development term for when developers merge changes to the code base to the main branch as soon and often as possible.

Continuous integration

A team that is composed of employees from different areas/departments in a company.

Cost of delay

A metric that combines urgency and value and is used by product managers to prioritize initiatives.

Customer Advisory Board

A group of strategic customers that meet at regular intervals to share their advice and insights with a company.

Customer Journey Map

A visual depiction of each step that a customer/user takes as they interact with your product (or company) to accomplish a specific goal.

Customer acquisition cost

The total cost that a company incurs to acquire a new customer.

Customer development

A process by which one works with their customers to develop a product.

Customer empathy

Knowing your customers to the point where you have a solid understanding of their underlying needs, pains, and key motivations.

Customer feedback

Suggestions, improvements, thoughts, experience and general sentiment on a product.

Customer health score

Relied upon mainly by customer success teams, this metrics measures the relationship between a product (or company) and their customers.

Customer success

Ensuring that your customers reach their desired goals as they interact with your product, service, or company.

DAU: Daily Active Users

A metric that tracks the number of users that are active on a product (website or app) each day.

DEEP Backlog

A concept that relates to how development backlogs should be groomed.

Data product manager

Product managers who place a key emphasis on data.

Definition of done

Agreed upon criteria that determines when a project or user story is considered complete.

Definition of ready

Agreed upon criteria that determines when a project or user story is considered ready to be considered for an estimation or added to a sprint for work to begin.

Dependency

Something that needs to occur before other work can be started or completed.

DevOps

A set of practices, tools, and shared understanding in a company (or team) with the purpose of increasing a company’s ability to quickly deliver software and services to customers.

Differentiation

Distinguishing your product from those of your competitors.

Digital transformation

Integrating the use of technology into the processes of a business to change how the business operates and delivers value to customers and users.

Divergent thinking

Also known as thinking outside of the box, this is generating creative ideas beyond conventional or expected ones.

Dogfooding

Also known as "eating your own dog food", this is when someone uses their own products and/or services.

Dual-Track Agile

When a cross-functional agile team divides its daily activities into two parallel tracks: discovery and development.

Ecosystem (product)

When a business has multiple products and/or services that complement one another and their customers can purchase and use them in tandem.

End-to-End

Each and every step of a product’s development from initial scoping to when it is released.

Epic

A collection of user stories, tasks, spikes, and tasks, with one unified goal.

Extreme Programming (XP)

An Agile development framework that focuses heavily on producing high quality software that meets customers and user needs, while also improving the development experience for developers.

FAB analysis

Features, Advantages, and Benefits Analysis.

FDD: Feature-Driven Development

An Agile methodology for developing software that focuses on customers, is iterative, and incremental.

Feature

Functionality within a product that delivers value to users and allows them to accomplish their goals.

Feature audit

A tool that is used to map the features of your product and analyze its usage.

Feature factory

A business that focuses on simply building features rather than building features that solve real problems.

Feature flag

A software development process that is used to enable or disable features without the need to deploy code.

Fibonacci

Used in Agile software development, this refers to using the fibonacci sequence when estimating the effort of tasks to complete.

Fidelity

This word literally means “accuracy in details.

First mover advantage

The ability of a business to establish a strong foothold in a market simply by being first in that market.

Five whys

An interview technique used to get to the underlying reason of a stated problem.

Framework

Rules, ideas, beliefs, or processes that are used to find solutions to problems so that you can define next steps.

Freemium

A popular business model where a business decides to offer features for free.

Frontend

A software development term that refers to everything a user sees and interacts with when using a digital product.

Fundamentally new product

A unique released product.

GA: General Availability

When a product will be released to the general public.

GTM: Go-to-Market Strategy

A company’s plan to convince customers to acquire their product or service while gaining a competitive advantage in their market.

Gantt chart

Used by project planners, gantt charts help teams plan work required around defined deadlines and manage resources throughout the project duration.

Get out of the building

This phrase helps you understand where to focus your energy when performing customer research.

Growth product manager

A product manager who is responsible for leading growth initiatives and making data driven decisions to increase the user base, scale, impact, and sales of a product.

Guerilla marketing

Using unconventional marketing methods to increase sales and/or attract attention to a product, brand, or business.

HEART framework

Developed by Google, this framework can be used to improve a product's user experience (UX).

Hard skills

Technical knowledge or training in specific areas that can be measured.

Hook Model

This model describes the process of how businesses can create products and services that become habits in the lives of their users and customers.

Hypercompetition

When competition is so intense among the companies in a market that it creates instability in that market.

ICE scoring

An acronym that stands for Impact, Confidence, and Ease of Implementation.

INVEST

A good user story will follow the INVEST model.

Idea management

A structured process within a business or team to generate, gather, organize, evaluate, and prioritize ideas from stakeholders.

Ideation

The process of generating new ideas and solutions on a given topic.

Impact effort matrix

A prioritization method that assesses and ranks proposed solutions based on the impact they can create (value) and the effort associated with the required work.

Impact mapping

A strategic and collaborative visual mapping of the goals of a business and how they intend to achieve those goals.

Implicit requirement

Hidden or assumed requirements that users and customers expect a product to have, though were not explicitly stated or defined during requirements gathering.

In-app messaging

Targeted notifications that are sent to users inside your product as they use it (mobile app, website, or desktop application).

Incremental innovation

When a business continuously makes small improvements to an existing product or service to wither add further value, or sustain value.

Innovation

Implementing new ideas or processes that result in new products and services or an improvement in existing products and services.

Integration

Software integration is the process of bringing various software parts into one and ensuring that they function well.

Intuitive

Intuitive design is when a user or customer sees your product they know what steps to take.

JIRA

One of the most popular tools in the software industry for issue tracking and project management.

JTBD: Jobs-To-Be-Done

A popular framework relied upon by many product managers that defines the specific problems to be solved for customers and the underlying reasons why.

KPI: Key Performance Indicator

A metric that tracks progress towards an intended goal.

LEMERS

A method that can be used to measure a product's usability.

LeSS: Large Scale Scrum

A framework for applying scrum principles to large teams that work together on a single project.

Lean Software Development

The application of lean principles into software development practices.

MRD: Market Requirements Document

This document defines a market's requirements and/or demands for a specific product.

MRR: Monthly Recurring Revenue

Income that a business expects to receive every single month.

MVP: Minimum Viable Product

A functional version of a product that contains enough features to place into the hands of users and customers, provide them with value, and they can provide feedback to help determine the next steps.

Market segmentation

Segmenting a large group into smaller more defined segments with similar characteristics.

Market share

The percentage of the total revenue or sales in a particular market that come from a business.

Mission statement

A statement that defines the purpose of a product or company, it defines the purpose the product or business exists.

Mixpanel

A popular analytics tool that tracks user activity in web and mobile products (among other features).

MoSCoW

A prioritization technique used to manage requirements for a product.

Mockup

A model of a product or feature created to be shared with stakeholders for communication purposes and it not functional.

NPS: Net Promoter Score

A customer loyalty metric that determines how likely customers are to recommend your product to others.

Needfinding

Research to identify the needs in a market for a particular solution.

North Star Metric

A key performance indicator (KPI) that represents the primary measure of success for a business or product.

OKR: Objectives & Key Results

A goal setting framework used by businesses, teams, and individuals to set broad, ambitious goals with measurable results that can be tracked.

Opportunity cost

The loss of value or benefit incurred when choosing one option over another.

PLG: Product-led growth

When the product serves as the primary driver for user acquisition, conversion, retention, and expansion rather than a separate team or department.

PX: Product Experience

The portion of the user journey that happens inside the product (website or app).

Page views

A metric that defines the total number of pages viewed (on a website) within a given time period.

Pair programming

An agile software technology practice where two developers work in tandem on one codebase.

Pivot

When a business changes its strategy in accordance to changing customer preferences, the industry, or other factors that may impact its goals or profitability.

Prioritization

The act of deciding the importance and urgency among various initiatives to determine which one(s) to move forward with.

Product

A solution to a problem shared by many.

Product designer

The one who oversees the entire process of a product's design.

Product development process

Defines all of the steps needed to take a product from idea to launch.

Product discovery

Activities performed with the goal of understanding if a product should be improved, and if so, where and when.

Product lifecycle

The process all products go through from when they are first introduced in a market to when they decline and are retired.

Product manager

Though there are many definitions for what a product manager is, their role boils down to 3 key responsibilities:.

Product market fit

"Product-market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.

Product marketing manager

A product marketing manager focuses on how the product should be positioned in the market and ensuring that its value is communicated and that it reaches its sales and marketing goals.

Product operations

An operational role that works to improve the relationship between product, engineering, and customer success teams.

Product owner

The individual in a scrum team that manages the development backlog and ensures that the strategic initiatives that a product manager has set are implemented.

Product portfolio

All of the products and services that a business offers.

Product portfolio management

Strategically managing the collection of products and services that a business offers to reach business goals.

Product spec

A document that details the blueprint for a product outlining what is being built, the requirements, who it is being built for, and the desired outcome.

Product stack

The tools and solutions that product managers use to launch a product into the market.

Product strategy

The goals for a product, how it will be accomplished, and how these goals tie into the overall strategy of the business as a whole.

Product vision

While the company vision describes how the overall company expects the world to be once they accomplish their mission, the product vision describes how the future should be based specifically on the offered product.

Project manager

Project managers manage projects.

Prototype

An early model of a solution used to test, experiment, and validate assumptions before moving forward.

QA: Quality Assurance developer

A QA developer is a software engineer whose focus is to prevent defects in the production codebase and improve the software development process.

R&D: Research and Development

Actions and initiatives undertaken by businesses to introduce innovative solutions into a market.

ROI: Return On Investment

A metric used to calculate the profitability of an undertaken investment.

Refactoring

A software development term that means rewriting existing code with the purpose of improving it.

Release demo

Demonstrating the latest improvements to a product prior to releasing it to customers.

Release notes

Documentation that is produced alongside the release of a product.

Retention

The ability of a product or service to keep its users or customers over a period of time.

Retrospective

A meeting held after the release of a product.

Return visitors

Visitors who come back to your site or application.

Roadmap

A strategic document that informs stakeholders how your business plans on improving a product.

SAFe: Scaled Agile Framework

A popular Agile framework used by larger organizations.

SMART

SMART is an acronym that outlines a beneficial strategy for setting and reaching specific goals.

STAR Method

The STAR method is a structured approach to answering behavioral interview questions by discussing a specific situation, task, action, and result. It helps candidates provide clear, concise, and relevant responses that demonstrate their skills and experiences

SWOT analysis

This acronym stands for:.

Sales forecast

A report that estimates the sales and revenue of a product or service within a given time period.

Scope creep

Changes in the scope of a project (adding new features or functions into a product being developed for example) that were not initially planned.

Scrum

A software development methodology where teams come together to prioritize work, set short term goals, and work as a team to bring products to the market.

Scrumban

Scrum and kanban mixed together.

Ship

To "ship" something means to release it.

Soft skills

Character traits and interpersonal skills that characterize one's relationship with others.

Sprint

A unit of time in which work is performed to accomplish a specific sprint goal.

Sprint planning

A scrum ritual where the scrum team meets to determine what can be completed in the sprint, how it will be achieved, and the sprint goal.

Stakeholder

There are two types of stakeholders that product managers work with: internal and external stakeholders.

Stakeholder management

The process of managing and maintaining a good amicable relationship with your stakeholders.

Standup

A daily meeting where the team gathers to discuss progress, work to perform for the day, and help required.

Story point

A number assigned to planned work which estimates the overall effort required to complete it.

Sunk cost

Money that has already been spent on an initiative and can not be recovered.

TAM: Total Addressable Market

A type of market sizing that demonstrates the total revenue opportunity for a product or service in a particular market.

TPM: Technical Product Manager

Product managers who have a deeper understanding of software development who can work with technical teams to define specific products and navigate deeper technical discussions.

Technical debt

A software development term that refers to development work that has to be redone due to previously performing work in a quick manner to accomplish a specific goal.

Theme

A grouping of user epics, user stories, and initiatives that relate to one another.

Tooltip

A brief message displayed on a screen when a user interacts with a particular part of the user interface.

Traffic

The number of visitors that a product receives.

USP: Unique Selling Proposition

Also known as Unique Selling Point or Unique Value Proposition, it is a succinct statement about the benefits of your products and services to your customers.

UVP: Unique Value Proposition

Also known as Unique Selling Proposition or Unique Selling Point, it is a succinct statement about the benefits of your products and services to your customers.

UX Designer

User experience design is the process of enhancing user satisfaction and loyalty by improving the usability, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction between the user and the product.

UX: User Experience

User experience is focused on the end user, aiming to make the process for the user to reach their goals as seamless and as frictionless as possible.

Usability

Usability is a quality attribute of products that determines how easy user interfaces are for end users to use.

Usability testing

Evaluating a working product, or prototype, with target users and observing them complete defined test cases, noting down their interactions.

Use case

A description of how a user will use a product to accomplish a specific goal.

User feedback

Information (qualitative and quantitative) from users on their likes, dislikes, and requests for a product.

User flows

A diagram that outlines the path that users take as they navigate through a website or an app.

User interface

Everything that a user sees on an application (app or website).

User onboarding

The process of introducing customers to a product or service and helping them set up their account so that they can use the product to accomplish their goals.

User persona

User personas, also known as customer personas or buyer personas, are used to assist product managers and other stakeholders with defining who their product is for.

User research

Methodical tasks taken to understand the behaviour, needs, pains, and motivations of users through observation and feedback methodologies.

User segmentation

Separating users into groups based on shared characteristics (device, age, behaviour, region, etc.

User story

A user story represents the needs of users.

User story mapping

A diagram that outlines a customer journey within a product including the activities and tasks they perform to accomplish a specific goal.

VOC: Voice of Customer

The process of collecting feedback from your customers to draw insights on the views, experiences, and unmet needs.

Value gap

The difference between the perceived value of a product or service and the actual value; when customers expect something but receive something else instead.

Value proposition

A statement that outlines the benefit that customers will receive if they use your product or service.

Vanity metrics

Metrics that make your feature, product, service, or business look good when communicated but do not assist in actionable metrics to improve.

Velocity

A number that measures the amount of story points that a software development team can complete in a sprint.

WIP: Work in Progress

Work that is not 100% complete

WSJF: Weighted shortest job first

A prioritization method used to plan the progression of work (features, epics, capabilities) based on the ones that can produce the highest value.

Waterfall

With Waterfall software development a team does not move forward to the next stage until the current one is 100% complete.

Weighted scoring

A prioritization method that provides a structured format for making decisions based on evaluating benefit versus costs against multiple criteria and scores to determine the best option to pursue.

What Not How

Emphasizing what a feature or product should do and now how.

Wireframe

A low fidelity illustration that lays out the information architecture of a product and is used for usability testing.

Working backwards

This method requires product teams to start from the end, a released product, by drafting an internal press release on the finished product to enable the team to focus on the product's benefits and on delivering the most appealing solutions and core benefits to the customers.

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A/B Test

AARRR Framework

AC: Acceptance Criteria

API: Application Programming Interface

ARR: Annual Recurring Revenue

Acceptance Testing

Actionable metrics

Adoption

Affinity diagram

Agile

Agile Manifesto

Alpha test

Application

B2B: Business-to-Business

B2C: Business-to-Consumer

BI: Business Intelligence

Backend

Backlog

Backlog grooming

Beta test

Brand equity

Break-even point

Bugs

Burndown chart

Business Model Canvas

Business case

Business model

Business plan

Buy a feature

CLV: Customer Lifetime Value

CPO: Chief Product Officer

Cannibalization

Cash flow

Churn rate

Competitive advantage

Competitive analysis

Complete product experience

Concept review

Continuous delivery

Continuous deployment

Continuous integration

Continuous integration

Cost of delay

Customer Advisory Board

Customer Journey Map

Customer acquisition cost

Customer development

Customer empathy

Customer feedback

Customer health score

Customer success

DAU: Daily Active Users

DEEP Backlog

Data product manager

Definition of done

Definition of ready

Dependency

DevOps

Differentiation

Digital transformation

Divergent thinking

Dogfooding

Dual-Track Agile

Ecosystem (product)

End-to-End

Epic

Extreme Programming (XP)

FAB analysis

FDD: Feature-Driven Development

Feature

Feature audit

Feature factory

Feature flag

Fibonacci

Fidelity

First mover advantage

Five whys