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KleroProduct Management Glossary
A comprehensive collection of 465+ terms covering product management, software development, and product building.
A
Term
Description
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A/b test
An experiment comparing two versions of something to determine which performs better based on measured outcomes.
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Aarrr (pirate metrics)
A framework for measuring startup growth through five stages: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue.
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Acceptance criteria
Specific conditions that a feature or user story must satisfy to be considered complete and accepted by stakeholders.
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Acceptance test
A test that verifies whether a system satisfies its acceptance criteria and meets business requirements from the user's perspective.
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Action priority matrix
A tool for prioritizing tasks based on effort required and impact delivered, helping teams focus on high-value work.
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Activation event
A specific action or milestone that indicates a user has experienced the core value of a product.
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Activation rate
The percentage of users who complete a key action indicating they've experienced a product's core value.
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Adaptive software development
An agile methodology emphasizing continuous adaptation, collaboration, and learning throughout development.
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Affinity diagram
A technique for organizing large amounts of unstructured information into meaningful groups based on natural relationships.
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Agile
An iterative approach to software development and project management that emphasizes flexibility, collaboration, and customer value.
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Agile ceremonies
Regular meetings in agile methodologies that structure team communication, planning, and continuous improvement.
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Agile definition of done
A shared checklist of criteria that must be met before work can be considered complete.
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Agile framework
A structured approach to implementing agile principles, providing specific practices, roles, and ceremonies for iterative development.
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Agile manifesto
The foundational document of agile software development, establishing four core values and twelve principles.
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Agile principles
The twelve guiding principles behind the Agile Manifesto that provide practical guidance for applying agile values.
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Agile product owner
The person responsible for maximizing product value by managing the backlog and representing stakeholder needs to the development team.
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Agile release train
A long-lived team of agile teams that plan, commit, and execute together to deliver value in a continuous flow.
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Agile transformation
The process of transitioning an organization to adopt agile values, principles, and practices across teams and functions.
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Agile values
The four fundamental values from the Agile Manifesto that guide agile software development and product management.
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Aha moment
The point when a user realizes the value of a product and understands why it matters to them.
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Alpha test
An early testing phase conducted internally to identify bugs and issues before releasing software to external users.
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Annual recurring revenue (arr)
The total value of recurring subscription revenue normalized to a one-year period, a key metric for SaaS businesses.
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Api (application programming interface)
A set of protocols that allows different software applications to communicate and share data with each other.
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Average revenue per user (arpu)
The average revenue generated per user or customer over a specific time period.
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B
Term
Description
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Backlog
A prioritized list of work items, features, and tasks that a team plans to deliver, serving as the single source of truth for what needs to be built.
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Backlog grooming
The ongoing process of reviewing, refining, and prioritizing items in the product backlog to ensure they are ready for upcoming sprints.
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Backlog refinement
Regular sessions where the product team reviews and prioritizes backlog items to ensure they are ready for upcoming sprints.
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Behavioral product management
An approach that applies behavioral science principles to understand and influence user behavior in product design and development.
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Behavioral segmentation
Dividing users into groups based on their actions and usage patterns rather than demographics alone.
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Beta test
A testing phase where a product is released to external users in real-world conditions before general availability.
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Big bang deployment
A deployment strategy where all changes are released at once to all users simultaneously.
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Bill of materials
A comprehensive list of all components required to build a product, increasingly important for software security and compliance.
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Blue-green deployment
A deployment strategy using two identical production environments to enable zero-downtime releases and instant rollback.
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Bottom-up strategy
A strategic approach where ideas and initiatives originate from individual contributors and teams rather than executive leadership.
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Brownfield project
A software project that builds on existing infrastructure and code rather than starting from scratch.
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Bubble sort
A simple sorting algorithm that repeatedly compares adjacent elements and swaps them if they are in the wrong order.
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Build-measure-learn
The core feedback loop from Lean Startup methodology that emphasizes rapid iteration through building, measuring results, and learning from data.
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Burndown chart
A visual representation of work remaining versus time, used in agile to track progress toward a goal.
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Burnup chart
A visual representation of work completed versus total scope over time, showing both progress and scope changes.
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Business agility
An organization's ability to rapidly adapt to market changes, customer needs, and emerging opportunities.
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Business case
A documented justification for a proposed project or investment, including analysis of costs, benefits, risks, and alternatives.
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Business ecosystem mapping
A visual technique for understanding the network of organizations and relationships that influence a business.
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Business intelligence
Technologies and practices for collecting, integrating, analyzing, and presenting business data to support better decision-making.
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Business model canvas
A strategic template for developing or documenting business models, visualizing key components on a single page.
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Business requirements document (brd)
A formal document that describes the business needs and expectations for a project, serving as the foundation for solution design and development.
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Business transformation
A fundamental change in how an organization operates, often involving technology, processes, culture, and business models.
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Buy a feature
A prioritization game where participants allocate limited play money to features they want, revealing relative value and driving collaboration.
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Buyer persona
A semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on research and data about existing customers.
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C
Term
Description
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Caching
A technique for storing frequently accessed data in a fast-access layer to reduce latency, decrease server load, and improve application performance.
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Canary release
A deployment strategy that rolls out changes to a small subset of users first, allowing teams to detect problems before full rollout.
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Cannibalization
When a company's new product or feature reduces sales or usage of its existing offerings, eating into its own market share rather than capturing new customers.
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Cdn (content delivery network)
A geographically distributed network of servers that delivers web content to users from locations close to them, reducing latency and improving performance.
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Certified product manager
A professional designation earned by completing a product management certification program, indicating foundational knowledge of PM practices and frameworks.
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Change enablement
The practice of preparing and supporting people through organizational or product changes to maximize adoption and minimize disruption.
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Change management
A structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state while managing resistance and ensuring adoption.
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Change management principles
The foundational guidelines and best practices that increase the likelihood of successful organizational and product change adoption.
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Channels of distribution
The pathways through which products or services reach customers, including direct sales, partners, marketplaces, and intermediaries.
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Chief product officer (cpo)
The executive responsible for an organization's overall product strategy, vision, and management, leading the product function at the highest level.
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Churn
The loss of customers or subscribers who stop using a product or cancel their subscriptions over a given period.
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Churn rate
The percentage of customers who stop using a product or cancel their subscription during a given time period.
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Ci/cd (continuous integration/continuous deployment)
Learn more about this term
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Circles method
A structured framework for answering product design questions by systematically examining context, users, pain points, solutions, and trade-offs.
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Closed beta
A pre-release testing phase where a limited, selected group of users tests a product to identify issues and provide feedback before public launch.
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Cohort analysis
A method of analyzing user behavior by grouping users based on shared characteristics or experiences, typically when they started using a product.
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Competitive analysis
A systematic evaluation of competitors' products, strategies, strengths, and weaknesses to inform product positioning and strategic decisions.
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Competitive intelligence
The ongoing collection, analysis, and application of information about competitors, market trends, and industry dynamics to inform strategic decisions.
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Competitive moat
A sustainable competitive advantage that protects a business from competitors, like a moat protects a castle from invaders.
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Competitor analysis
The process of identifying competitors and evaluating their strategies, strengths, and weaknesses relative to your own product or company.
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Concept review
A collaborative meeting where stakeholders evaluate early product concepts before significant development investment begins.
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Concept testing
A research method that evaluates how target customers respond to a product idea before it's built, testing appeal and viability early.
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Continuous delivery
A software development practice where code changes are automatically built, tested, and prepared for release to production, enabling deployment at any time.
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Continuous deployment
A software release practice where every code change that passes automated tests is automatically deployed to production without human intervention.
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Continuous discovery
An ongoing product practice where teams maintain constant contact with customers to inform decisions, rather than doing research only at project start.
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Continuous improvement
An ongoing effort to improve products, processes, and practices incrementally over time, rather than through occasional major changes.
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Conversion funnel analysis
A method of analyzing user progression through sequential steps toward a goal, identifying where users drop off and why.
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Conversion rate
The percentage of users who complete a desired action, calculated by dividing conversions by the total number of users or sessions.
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Conversion rate optimization
The systematic process of increasing the percentage of users who complete desired actions through testing, analysis, and iterative improvement.
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Cost of delay
The economic impact of not delivering a feature, product, or project sooner, quantifying the value lost by delaying work.
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Cross functional team
A team composed of people with different functional expertise working together toward a common goal, enabling end-to-end delivery without external dependencies.
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Cross-functional leadership
The ability to lead and influence across organizational boundaries, aligning diverse functions toward common objectives without direct authority.
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Crystal agile framework
A family of agile methodologies developed by Alistair Cockburn that adapts processes based on team size, project criticality, and other contextual factors.
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Customer acquisition cost (cac)
The total cost of acquiring a new customer, calculated by dividing sales and marketing expenses by the number of customers acquired.
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Customer advisory board
A group of customers who provide structured feedback, strategic guidance, and market insights to help shape product direction and company strategy.
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Customer churn
The loss of customers over time, measured as the rate at which customers stop doing business with a company or cancel subscriptions.
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Customer development
A methodology for discovering and validating that a business model addresses real customer needs before committing resources to scale.
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Customer discovery
The first phase of Customer Development where teams validate problem-solution fit by directly engaging potential customers to understand their needs.
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Customer effort score (ces)
A metric measuring how much effort a customer had to expend to accomplish something, like resolving an issue or completing a task.
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Customer empathy
The ability to deeply understand and share the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of customers, enabling better product decisions.
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Customer experience (cx)
The total of all interactions and perceptions a customer has with a company across the entire relationship, from discovery through ongoing use.
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Customer feedback
Information provided by customers about their experience with a product, used to improve and prioritize development.
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Customer feedback loop
A continuous process of collecting, analyzing, acting on, and responding to customer feedback.
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Customer health score
A composite metric that predicts customer retention by combining multiple signals of engagement, satisfaction, and value realization.
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Customer journey map
A visual representation of the steps customers take when engaging with a company, from initial awareness through ongoing use, including emotions and pain points at each stage.
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Customer life cycle
The stages a customer progresses through in their relationship with a company, from prospect to advocate, and the strategies for each stage.
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Customer lifetime value (clv/ltv)
The total revenue a business can expect from a single customer account throughout their entire relationship.
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Customer onboarding
The process of helping new customers learn to use a product successfully and achieve initial value, critical for activation and long-term retention.
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Customer satisfaction score (csat)
A metric measuring customer satisfaction with a product, service, or interaction, typically on a scale from 1-5 or 1-10.
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Customer segmentation
The practice of dividing customers into groups based on shared characteristics, enabling targeted strategies for each segment.
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Customer success
A proactive business function focused on ensuring customers achieve their desired outcomes while using a product, driving retention and expansion.
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Customer value proposition
A clear statement of the tangible benefits customers receive from using a product, explaining why they should choose it over alternatives.
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D
Term
Description
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Daci
A decision-making framework that clarifies roles by identifying the Driver, Approver, Contributors, and Informed parties for any decision.
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Daily active users (dau)
The count of unique users who engage with a product within a 24-hour period, serving as a fundamental measure of product engagement.
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Daily scrum
A brief daily meeting where the development team synchronizes work, identifies blockers, and plans the day ahead.
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Dark launch
Releasing features to production without making them visible to users, enabling testing with real traffic and data before public rollout.
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Data product manager
A product manager specializing in data-centric products, platforms, or features, bridging the gap between data capabilities and business value.
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Data-driven decision making
An approach to decision-making that emphasizes using data and analytics rather than intuition or observation alone to guide choices.
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Deep backlog
Items in the product backlog that are low priority, far from implementation, and intentionally kept less refined.
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Definition of done
A shared checklist of criteria that must be met before work is considered complete, ensuring consistent quality and shared understanding.
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Definition of ready
Criteria that a backlog item must meet before the team commits to working on it, ensuring work is sufficiently prepared for development.
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Demand generation strategies
Marketing and product approaches designed to create awareness, interest, and desire for a product among potential customers.
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Dependency
A relationship where one piece of work, team, or system requires another to be completed or available before progress can be made.
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Deploy
The process of releasing software changes to an environment where users can access them, moving code from development to production.
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Design concept
An early-stage representation of a design idea that communicates the vision and direction before detailed design work begins.
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Design ops
The practice of optimizing design team operations, tools, processes, and workflows to increase design efficiency and impact.
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Design sprint
A five-day structured process for rapidly solving design problems through understanding, ideation, prototyping, and user testing.
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Design system
A collection of reusable components, standards, and guidelines that ensure consistency and efficiency across product design and development.
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Design thinking
A human-centered approach to problem-solving that emphasizes understanding user needs, rapid prototyping, and iterative testing.
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Devops
A set of practices that combines software development and IT operations to shorten development cycles and deliver high-quality software continuously.
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Digital product manager
A product manager focused on digital products like websites, apps, and software platforms, emphasizing user experience and data-driven iteration.
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Digital product strategy
A plan that defines how digital products will create value for users and the business, guiding technology investments and product development decisions.
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Digital transformation
The process of integrating digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how it operates and delivers value to customers.
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Disciplined agile
A process decision framework that provides guidance for choosing and tailoring agile and lean approaches based on context.
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Discovery phase
The early stage of product development focused on understanding user needs, validating problems, and exploring potential solutions before committing to build.
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Disruptive innovation
Innovation that creates new markets by offering simpler, cheaper, or more accessible solutions that eventually displace established competitors.
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Distinctive competence
A unique capability or strength that an organization possesses that competitors cannot easily replicate, creating sustainable competitive advantage.
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Documentation
Written materials that capture product knowledge, decisions, processes, and specifications for current and future reference.
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Dogfooding
The practice of using your own product internally before releasing it to customers, gaining firsthand experience with its strengths and weaknesses.
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Double diamond
A design process framework consisting of four phases - Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver - that alternates between divergent and convergent thinking.
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Dual track agile
An approach that runs product discovery and product delivery as parallel, continuous activities rather than sequential phases.
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Dynamic systems development method
An agile project delivery framework that emphasizes iterative development, user involvement, and delivering business value within fixed time and cost constraints.
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E
Term
Description
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Early adopter
Users who embrace new products before the mainstream market, providing valuable feedback and validation during a product's formative stages.
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Eisenhower matrix
A prioritization framework that categorizes tasks by urgency and importance to help focus on what truly matters.
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Empathy map
A collaborative visualization tool that captures what users say, think, feel, and do to build shared understanding of customer perspectives.
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End-of-life (eol)
The point at which a product, feature, or version is no longer supported, maintained, or sold by its creator.
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Engineering backlog
A prioritized list of technical work items separate from the product backlog, including infrastructure improvements, technical debt, and developer experience enhancements.
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Enterprise architecture planning
A strategic discipline that aligns an organization's IT infrastructure and systems with its business goals through structured planning and governance.
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Enterprise architecture roadmap
A strategic plan that sequences technology investments and architectural changes over time to move an organization from its current state toward a target architecture.
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Enterprise feedback management
A systematic approach to collecting, analyzing, and acting on feedback from customers, employees, and stakeholders across an entire organization.
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Enterprise transformation
A fundamental, organization-wide change initiative that reshapes business models, processes, culture, and technology to achieve strategic objectives.
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Epic
A large body of work that can be broken down into smaller user stories, representing a significant product feature or initiative.
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Error budget
The acceptable amount of unreliability or downtime a service can have, calculated as the inverse of its reliability target.
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Escape velocity
The point at which a product or company achieves enough momentum to break free from constraints and sustain independent growth.
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Event storming
A collaborative workshop technique for exploring complex business domains by modeling events, commands, and actors on a shared visual timeline.
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Experiment
A structured test designed to validate or invalidate a hypothesis about user behavior, product performance, or business outcomes.
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Extreme programming (xp)
An agile software development methodology emphasizing technical excellence, continuous feedback, and close collaboration through practices like pair programming and test-driven development.
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F
Term
Description
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Feature audit
A systematic review of existing product features to assess usage, value, and alignment with business goals.
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Feature bloat
The gradual accumulation of features that makes a product complex, slow, and difficult to use.
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Feature creep
The gradual expansion of a project's scope through the continuous addition of new features beyond the original plan.
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Feature driven development
An agile methodology that organizes development around delivering client-valued features in short iterations.
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Feature factory
An anti-pattern where teams focus on shipping features without measuring outcomes or validating impact.
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Feature flag (feature toggle)
A software development technique that allows features to be enabled or disabled without deploying new code.
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Feature kickoff
A collaborative meeting where the team aligns on a feature's goals, scope, and approach before development begins.
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Feature less roadmap
A roadmap format that communicates strategic direction through themes and outcomes rather than specific features.
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Feature outcome assessment
The process of evaluating whether a shipped feature achieved its intended impact on users and the business.
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Feature parity
The state of having equivalent functionality across different platforms, versions, or products.
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Feature prioritization
The process of deciding which features to build, in what order, based on value, effort, and strategic alignment.
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Feature release
The process of making a new feature available to users, encompassing technical deployment and user communication.
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Feature rollout
The gradual process of releasing a feature to increasing percentages of users while monitoring for issues.
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Feature usage metrics
Quantitative measurements of how users interact with specific product features.
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Features
Distinct capabilities or functionalities within a product that deliver specific value to users.
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Feedback loop
A cyclical process where outputs of a system become inputs that influence future behavior and decisions.
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Feedback loop efficiency
A measure of how quickly and effectively information flows from users back to product decisions.
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Feedback management
The systematic collection, organization, analysis, and action on user and customer feedback.
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Fibonacci agile estimation
Using Fibonacci sequence numbers (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13...) to estimate the relative effort of work items.
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Finance product manager
A product manager specializing in financial products, services, or the financial systems within a company.
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First value moment
The point in the user journey when a new user first experiences the core value of a product.
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Five whys
A problem-solving technique that explores cause-and-effect by asking 'why' repeatedly to identify root causes.
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Freemium
A business model offering a free basic product with optional paid upgrades for advanced features.
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Friction
Any element that slows, stops, or discourages users from completing desired actions within a product.
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Functional requirements document (frd)
A detailed specification of what a system should do, describing features and functions from the user's perspective.
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Funnel analysis
A method for visualizing and analyzing the sequential steps users take toward a conversion goal.
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G
Term
Description
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Gantt chart
A horizontal bar chart that visualizes project schedules, showing tasks, their durations, and dependencies over time.
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General availability (ga)
The release stage when a product or feature becomes available to all customers, following internal testing, alpha, and beta phases.
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Gist planning
A planning framework that connects Goals, Ideas, Step-projects, and Tasks in a hierarchy, emphasizing evidence-based prioritization over opinion.
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Go to market strategy (gtm)
A comprehensive plan for launching a product to market, defining target customers, positioning, pricing, channels, and how sales, marketing, and product teams coordinate.
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Go-to-market plan
A tactical document that translates go-to-market strategy into specific activities, timelines, responsibilities, and deliverables for bringing a product to market.
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Go/no-go decision
Learn more about this term
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Goal question metrics
A framework for defining meaningful metrics by starting with goals, deriving questions that indicate goal achievement, then identifying metrics that answer those questions.
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Golden path
The ideal user journey through a product where everything works as designed, leading to successful outcomes with minimal friction.
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Greenfield project
A project built from scratch without constraints from existing systems, allowing teams to make fresh technical and design decisions.
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Group product manager
A senior product role responsible for managing multiple product managers and coordinating product strategy across related product areas.
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Growth hacking
An experimental, data-driven approach to finding scalable growth tactics through rapid testing and iteration, typically prioritizing acquisition and activation metrics.
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Growth product manager
A product manager specialized in driving user acquisition, activation, retention, and monetization through experimentation and data-driven optimization.
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H
Term
Description
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Hard launch
A full public release of a product or feature to all users simultaneously, typically accompanied by marketing and PR efforts.
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Heart framework
A user-centered metrics framework developed by Google measuring Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success.
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Heatmap
A visual representation of user behavior on a webpage or interface, using color intensity to show where users click, scroll, or focus attention.
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High-fidelity prototype
A detailed, realistic prototype that closely resembles the final product in appearance and functionality, used for user testing and stakeholder presentations.
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Hook model
A framework describing how products create habit-forming experiences through four phases: Trigger, Action, Variable Reward, and Investment.
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Horizontal scaling
Adding more machines or instances to distribute load across a system, as opposed to vertical scaling which adds resources to existing machines.
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Hypothesis-driven development
An approach to product development that treats features as experiments with explicit hypotheses about expected outcomes, tested through measurement.
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I
Term
Description
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Ice scoring model
A prioritization framework that scores ideas based on Impact, Confidence, and Ease, multiplied together to rank opportunities.
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Idea backlog
A repository of potential features, improvements, and innovations collected from various sources, held for evaluation and potential development.
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Idea management
The systematic process of collecting, evaluating, and developing ideas from various sources to drive product innovation and improvement.
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Ideal customer profile (icp)
A detailed description of the type of company or customer that would benefit most from your product and be most valuable to your business.
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Ideation
The creative process of generating, developing, and communicating new ideas, typically through structured brainstorming and collaborative techniques.
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Impact mapping
A strategic planning technique that connects business goals to deliverables by mapping the actors and impacts needed to achieve objectives.
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Implicit requirements
Unstated expectations and needs that users assume will be met, often so fundamental they're never explicitly requested.
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In app messaging
Communication delivered to users while they're actively using an application, including tooltips, modals, banners, and contextual prompts.
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Incident management practice
The process for detecting, responding to, and resolving unplanned disruptions to services, minimizing impact and restoring normal operations.
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Incremental development
A development approach that builds software in small, functional pieces that add to a growing whole, rather than delivering all functionality at once.
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Incremental innovation
Small, continuous improvements to existing products or processes that enhance performance without fundamentally changing the underlying technology or market.
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Information architecture
The structural design of information environments, organizing and labeling content to support usability and findability.
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Information flows in product management
The movement of data, feedback, and insights between teams, customers, and stakeholders that enables informed product decisions.
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Information technology
The use of computers, networks, and systems to store, retrieve, transmit, and manipulate data in support of business operations.
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Innovation accounting
A method for measuring progress on innovative projects that lack traditional revenue metrics, using leading indicators and validated learning milestones.
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Innovation management
The systematic process of managing an organization's innovation efforts, from idea generation through implementation and value capture.
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Innovation roadmap
A strategic plan showing how an organization will pursue innovation opportunities over time, including research, development, and commercialization activities.
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Integration testing
Testing that verifies different components or systems work together correctly when combined.
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Intuitive design
Design that users can understand and use without explicit instruction, based on familiar patterns and logical organization.
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Iot (internet of things) product manager
A product manager specializing in connected device products, managing the intersection of hardware, software, connectivity, and user experience.
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It project manager
A role focused on planning, executing, and completing technology projects within scope, time, and budget constraints.
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Iteration
A time-boxed development cycle where a team plans, builds, and reviews work, using feedback to improve in subsequent cycles.
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Iterative design
A design methodology based on cycles of prototyping, testing, analyzing, and refining a product or concept.
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Iterative testing
A testing approach where evaluation happens repeatedly throughout development, with each round informing improvements before the next test.
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K
Term
Description
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Kaizen
A Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement through small, incremental changes made by everyone in an organization.
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Kanban
A visual workflow management method that helps teams visualize work, limit work-in-progress, and maximize efficiency through continuous delivery.
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Kanban board
A visual tool that displays work items as cards moving through columns representing workflow stages, enabling teams to see status and bottlenecks at a glance.
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Kanban roadmap
A flexible product roadmap organized by workflow stages rather than fixed timelines, emphasizing continuous flow and adaptability over date-based commitments.
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Kano model
A framework for categorizing product features based on how they affect customer satisfaction, distinguishing between must-haves, performance features, and delighters.
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Key performance indicator (kpi)
A quantifiable metric used to evaluate the success of an organization, product, or initiative in achieving its objectives.
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Key results
Measurable outcomes that indicate progress toward an objective, forming the quantitative half of the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework.
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Kickoff meeting
An initial meeting that aligns stakeholders and team members on a project's goals, scope, timeline, and responsibilities before work begins.
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L
Term
Description
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Land and expand
A sales and growth strategy where you start with a small initial deal or use case, then grow the account over time through adoption, upsells, and cross-sells.
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Late majority
The pragmatic segment of adopters who wait until a technology is well-established and proven before adopting, comprising about 34% of the market.
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Latency
The time delay between a user action and the system response, directly impacting user experience and perceived product performance.
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Launch
The coordinated release of a product or feature to users, encompassing technical deployment, marketing activities, and organizational readiness.
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Lead product manager
A senior individual contributor role responsible for complex product areas, mentoring other PMs, and influencing product strategy without direct management responsibilities.
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Lead time
The total elapsed time from when a work request is made until it is delivered, including both waiting time and active work time.
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Lean canvas
A one-page business model template adapted from Business Model Canvas for startups, focusing on problems, solutions, key metrics, and unfair advantages.
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Lean startup
A methodology for developing businesses and products that emphasizes rapid experimentation, validated learning, and iterative release cycles to reduce waste and risk.
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Lean ux
A design methodology that applies lean principles to user experience, emphasizing rapid experimentation, collaborative design, and validated learning over detailed deliverables.
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Less (large scale scrum)
A framework for scaling Scrum to multiple teams working on a single product while maintaining simplicity and avoiding unnecessary process overhead.
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Lifetime value (ltv)
The predicted total revenue a business will earn from a customer throughout their entire relationship, used to guide acquisition spending and customer investment.
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Load balancing
The technique of distributing incoming network traffic or workload across multiple servers to ensure reliability, performance, and efficient resource utilization.
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Localization
The process of adapting a product to meet the language, cultural, and regulatory requirements of a specific market or region.
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Low-fidelity prototype
A quick, rough representation of a product concept used to explore ideas, gather early feedback, and test assumptions before investing in detailed design.
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M
Term
Description
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Market analysis
A systematic examination of market dynamics, size, trends, competition, and customer segments to inform strategic product and business decisions.
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Market fit
The alignment between a product and its target market's needs, indicating that the product satisfies real demand and can grow sustainably.
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Market opportunity analysis
A structured evaluation of potential market opportunities to assess their viability, attractiveness, and fit with organizational capabilities.
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Market penetration strategy
A growth strategy focused on increasing market share for existing products in existing markets through competitive positioning, pricing, or expanded reach.
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Market requirements document (mrd)
A strategic document that describes market needs, opportunities, and business context to guide product development decisions before detailed specifications are created.
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Market segmentation
The process of dividing a broad market into distinct subgroups of consumers who have common needs, characteristics, or behaviors.
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Market validation
The process of testing whether real demand exists for a product concept before significant development investment, using evidence from potential customers.
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Marketing qualified lead (mql)
A prospect who has demonstrated enough engagement with marketing content to indicate potential interest but hasn't yet been evaluated as sales-ready.
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Method of procedure
A detailed step-by-step document describing exactly how to perform a specific operation, often used for critical system changes or deployments.
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Microservices
An architectural approach where applications are built as a collection of small, independent services that communicate over well-defined APIs.
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Milestone
A significant checkpoint in a project or product roadmap marking the completion of a major phase, deliverable, or objective.
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Minimum lovable product (mlp)
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Minimum viable experience (mve)
The smallest complete user experience that delivers value, emphasizing end-to-end journey quality over feature quantity.
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Minimum viable feature
The smallest implementation of a feature that delivers value to users and enables learning, applied to incremental product development.
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Minimum viable product (mvp)
The simplest version of a product that can be released to early customers for feedback and validation.
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Mission statement
A concise declaration of an organization's or product's core purpose, defining why it exists and who it serves.
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Mockup
A static visual representation of a product design that shows how it will look, used for review and feedback before development.
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Monolith architecture
A software architecture where the entire application is built as a single, unified unit with all components deployed together.
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Monthly active users (mau)
The count of unique users who engage with a product within a 30-day period, serving as a primary metric for product adoption and engagement scale.
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Monthly recurring revenue (mrr)
The predictable, normalized monthly revenue from all active subscriptions, serving as the primary metric for subscription business health and growth.
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Moscow method
A prioritization technique that categorizes requirements into Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won't have to guide scope decisions and stakeholder alignment.
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N
Term
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Needfinding
A research approach focused on discovering users' unmet needs, latent desires, and underlying motivations through observation and empathetic inquiry.
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Net promoter score (nps)
A customer loyalty metric that measures how likely customers are to recommend a product or company, calculated from responses to a single survey question.
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Net revenue retention (nrr)
A metric measuring the revenue retained from existing customers including expansion, contraction, and churn, indicating the underlying health of a subscription business.
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North star metric
A single key metric that captures the core value a product delivers to customers and drives long-term success.
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Now-next-later roadmap
A flexible roadmap format organized by time horizons rather than specific dates, indicating what's being worked on now, what comes next, and what's planned for later.
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O
Term
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Objectives and key results (okrs)
A goal-setting framework that defines ambitious objectives and the measurable key results needed to achieve them.
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Onboarding flow
The sequence of steps and screens that guide new users from signup to experiencing a product's core value for the first time.
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One-pager
A concise single-page document that summarizes a product initiative, feature proposal, or business concept to facilitate quick understanding and decision-making.
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Open beta
A pre-release testing phase where a product is made available to any user who wants to try it, gathering broad feedback before the official launch.
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Opportunity cost
The value of the best alternative foregone when making a decision, representing what you give up by choosing one option over another.
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Opportunity scoring
A prioritization technique that ranks product opportunities based on how important they are to customers and how satisfied customers are with current solutions.
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Opportunity solution tree
A visual framework that maps the path from a desired outcome through customer opportunities to potential solutions and experiments, ensuring product decisions remain outcome-focused.
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Outcome vs output
The distinction between measuring what a team produces (outputs) versus the impact that work has on customers or the business (outcomes).
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P
Term
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Pair programming
A collaborative software development practice where two programmers work together at one workstation, with one writing code and the other reviewing in real time.
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Pdca cycle
A four-step iterative management method (Plan-Do-Check-Act) used for continuous improvement of processes and products.
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Persona
A semi-fictional representation of an ideal customer based on research and data, used to guide product decisions and communicate user needs.
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Pert chart
A project management tool that visualizes tasks, dependencies, and timelines to analyze the time required to complete a project.
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Pilot program
A small-scale, preliminary test of a product, feature, or process with a limited group before full rollout.
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Pivot
A fundamental change in business strategy or product direction based on validated learning, while keeping one foot grounded in what has been learned.
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Planning poker
A consensus-based estimation technique where team members use cards to simultaneously reveal their effort estimates, then discuss and converge on a final estimate.
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Platform product manager
A product manager who focuses on building internal or external platforms that enable other teams or third parties to build products and features.
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Plg (product-led growth)
A go-to-market strategy where the product itself drives customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion through self-service experiences.
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Pmf (product-market fit)
The point where a product satisfies strong market demand, indicated by rapid organic growth and high user retention.
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Post-mortem
A structured review conducted after a project, incident, or release to analyze what happened, identify lessons learned, and improve future performance.
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Pricing strategy
The approach a company takes to set prices for its products or services, balancing value capture, market positioning, and business objectives.
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Principal product manager
A senior individual contributor product management role focused on solving complex problems, influencing strategy, and elevating PM practice across an organization.
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Prioritization
The process of determining the relative importance of work items to decide what to do first, what to defer, and what to decline.
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Problem statement
A clear, concise description of the issue to be addressed, defining who is affected, what the problem is, and why it matters.
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Product analytics
The practice of collecting, measuring, and analyzing user behavior data to understand how people interact with a product and inform product decisions.
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Product backlog
An ordered list of everything that is known to be needed in a product, serving as the single source of work for the development team.
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Product brief
A concise document that outlines the vision, goals, target users, and key requirements for a product or feature initiative.
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Product council
A cross-functional leadership body that governs product decisions, aligns priorities across teams, and resolves strategic trade-offs.
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Product development lifecycle
The complete sequence of stages a product goes through from initial concept to retirement, including ideation, development, launch, growth, and end-of-life.
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Product discovery
The process of determining what to build by exploring user needs, testing assumptions, and validating solutions before committing to development.
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Product led growth
A go-to-market strategy where the product itself drives customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion through self-service experiences.
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Product manager
The person responsible for defining what a product should be and ensuring it delivers value to users and the business.
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Product marketing
The function responsible for bringing products to market and driving adoption through positioning, messaging, launches, and sales enablement.
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Product mission
A concise statement that defines the fundamental purpose of a product - why it exists and what value it creates for users.
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Product operations (product ops)
A function that optimizes how product teams work by improving processes, tools, and data access to enable better product decisions at scale.
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Product owner
A Scrum role responsible for maximizing product value by managing the product backlog, defining requirements, and representing stakeholder needs to the development team.
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Product portfolio
The complete collection of products and services a company offers, managed strategically to optimize resource allocation and market coverage.
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Product principles
Core values and guidelines that inform product decisions, providing consistent direction when specific rules don't exist.
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Product qualified lead (pql)
A lead who has demonstrated buying intent through meaningful engagement with the product, typically during a free trial or freemium experience.
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Product requirements document (prd)
A comprehensive document that defines what a product or feature should do, providing the specifications that guide design and development.
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Product sense
The intuitive ability to understand what makes a product good, including user empathy, taste, and judgment about feature decisions.
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Product strategy
The high-level plan that defines what a product will achieve and how it will compete and win in the market.
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Product team
A cross-functional group responsible for discovering, designing, building, and delivering a product or product area.
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Product trio
The collaborative partnership of Product Manager, Product Designer, and Tech Lead who work together on product discovery and decision-making.
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Product vision
An aspirational description of the future state the product will help create, providing inspirational direction for long-term product development.
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Product-market fit
The point where a product satisfies strong market demand, indicated by rapid organic growth and high user retention.
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Program management
The coordinated management of multiple related projects to achieve strategic objectives that couldn't be accomplished by managing projects individually.
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Program manager
A professional who coordinates multiple related projects to achieve strategic business objectives, managing dependencies and ensuring alignment.
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Progressive disclosure
A design pattern that sequences information and options, presenting basic elements first and revealing advanced options only when needed.
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Project manager
A professional responsible for planning, executing, and completing projects on time, within scope, and within budget.
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Project roadmap
A visual timeline showing the planned sequence of work, milestones, and deliverables for a specific project.
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Prototype
A preliminary model or representation of a product used to explore ideas, test concepts, and gather feedback before committing to full development.
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Q
Term
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Qualitative data
Non-numerical information that captures qualities, characteristics, and meanings - such as user feedback, interview transcripts, and observational notes.
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Qualitative research
Research methods that explore the 'why' behind user behavior through interviews, observations, and open-ended inquiry rather than numerical measurement.
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Qualitative user feedback analysis
The systematic process of examining non-numerical user feedback to identify patterns, themes, and actionable insights that inform product decisions.
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Quality assurance (qa)
The systematic process of ensuring that products meet defined quality standards through testing, review, and process improvement.
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Quality function deployment
A structured methodology that translates customer requirements into specific product features and engineering specifications through a series of matrices.
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Quantitative data
Numerical information that can be measured, counted, and analyzed statistically - such as usage metrics, conversion rates, and survey scores.
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Quantitative research
Research methods that collect and analyze numerical data to measure user behavior, validate hypotheses, and identify patterns at scale.
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Quarterly business review (qbr)
A structured meeting held every quarter to assess business performance, review progress against goals, and align on priorities for the upcoming period.
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Quick wins
Low-effort improvements that deliver immediate, visible value - used to build momentum, demonstrate progress, and create goodwill for larger initiatives.
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R
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Raci matrix
A responsibility assignment chart that clarifies roles by defining who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for each task or decision.
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Rapid application development
A software development methodology emphasizing quick prototyping and iterative delivery over lengthy planning phases.
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Rapid experimentation
A systematic approach to quickly testing hypotheses about product changes through short, focused experiments that generate actionable data.
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Rapid prototyping
A fast, iterative approach to creating working models of a product to test concepts, gather feedback, and validate ideas before full development.
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Rational product management
A systematic, evidence-based approach to product decisions that emphasizes data, structured frameworks, and logical analysis over intuition.
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Refactoring
The process of restructuring existing code without changing its external behavior to improve readability, maintainability, and performance.
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Release candidate
A version of software that is potentially ready for release, pending final testing and approval.
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Release demo
A presentation showcasing completed work to stakeholders at the end of a development cycle, demonstrating what will be released.
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Release management
The process of planning, scheduling, coordinating, and controlling software releases from development through deployment.
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Release notes
Documentation that accompanies a software release, describing what changed, what's new, and what users need to know.
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Release plan
A document outlining what will be delivered in upcoming releases, including features, timelines, dependencies, and responsibilities.
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Release train
A fixed schedule for software releases where new versions ship at regular intervals regardless of which features are ready.
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Retention
The ability of a product to keep users engaged and returning over time, indicating ongoing value delivery.
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Retention curves
Visual representations of how user retention changes over time, showing what percentage of users remain active at each time interval.
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Retention rate
The percentage of users who continue using a product over a specified time period, measuring ongoing engagement and value delivery.
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Retrospective
A regular team meeting to reflect on recent work, identify what went well and what didn't, and plan improvements for future iterations.
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Revenue per user (rpu)
A metric calculating the average revenue generated per user over a specific period, indicating monetization effectiveness.
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Rice scoring model
A prioritization framework that scores initiatives based on Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort to determine relative priority.
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Risk assessment
A systematic process for identifying, analyzing, and evaluating potential risks that could affect a project, product, or initiative.
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Roadmap
A strategic document that communicates the planned direction and priorities for a product over time.
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Roadmap milestones
Significant checkpoints on a product roadmap that mark the completion of major phases, features, or objectives.
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Roadmap revolution
A shift in roadmapping philosophy away from date-driven feature lists toward outcome-focused, flexible plans that embrace uncertainty.
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Roadmapping tool
Software designed to help product teams create, maintain, and communicate product roadmaps and strategic plans.
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Rollback
The process of reverting a software system to a previous version when a new deployment causes problems.
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Rolling deployment
A deployment strategy that gradually replaces instances of the old application version with the new version, minimizing downtime and risk.
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S
Term
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Sales qualified lead (sql)
A prospective customer who has been researched and vetted by marketing, then reviewed by sales, and is deemed ready for direct sales engagement.
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Scalability
The capability of a system, product, or organization to handle increased demand by adding resources without fundamental redesign.
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Scaled agile framework (safe)
A set of organizational and workflow patterns for implementing agile practices at enterprise scale across multiple teams.
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Scope
The boundaries of what a project, product, or feature will and will not include, defining the extent of work to be delivered.
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Scope creep
The gradual, uncontrolled expansion of project or product scope without corresponding adjustments to time, budget, or resources.
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Scrum
An agile framework for developing and delivering products through iterative sprints, defined roles, and regular ceremonies.
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Scrum agile framework
The combination of Scrum practices with underlying agile principles, forming a complete approach to iterative product development.
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Scrum master
A servant-leader who facilitates Scrum events, removes impediments, and helps the team continuously improve their process.
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Sdk (software development kit)
A collection of software tools, libraries, documentation, and code samples that developers use to build applications for a specific platform.
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Sentiment analysis
The automated process of identifying and extracting subjective information from text to determine whether the expressed opinion is positive, negative, or neutral.
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Serverless
A cloud computing model where the provider manages server infrastructure, automatically scaling and charging only for actual execution time.
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Service transformation
The strategic process of fundamentally redesigning how an organization delivers services to improve customer experience, efficiency, and value.
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Serviceable addressable market (sam)
The portion of the Total Addressable Market that your company can realistically target with its current products and capabilities.
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Serviceable obtainable market (som)
The realistic portion of the Serviceable Addressable Market that your company can capture given competition, resources, and go-to-market capabilities.
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Session length
The duration of time a user spends actively engaged with an application or website during a single visit.
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Session recording
A technology that captures and replays user interactions with a website or application, showing exactly how users navigate and experience the product.
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Shadow it
Technology systems, software, and services used within an organization without official IT department approval or oversight.
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Shape up method
A product development methodology created at Basecamp that emphasizes fixed time periods, flexible scope, and giving teams full autonomy to deliver shaped work.
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Shipyard engine
A continuous delivery and deployment automation platform that orchestrates workflows across multiple tools and environments.
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Sla (service level agreement)
A formal agreement that defines the expected level of service between a provider and customer, including metrics, responsibilities, and remedies for failures.
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Sli (service level indicator)
A quantitative measure of a specific aspect of service quality, used as the foundation for setting objectives and agreements.
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Slo (service level objective)
An internal target for service quality that defines acceptable levels for specific metrics, used to balance reliability investment with feature development.
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Smart goal setting
A framework for creating goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound to increase the likelihood of success.
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Soft launch
A limited release of a product or feature to a subset of users before the full public launch, used to test performance and gather feedback.
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Software requirements specification (srs)
A comprehensive document that describes what a software system should do, serving as a contract between stakeholders and development teams.
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Spike
A time-boxed research or exploration task used to reduce uncertainty, answer questions, or prove feasibility before committing to full implementation.
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Sprint
A fixed time period (usually 1-4 weeks) during which a development team works to complete a set of planned work.
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Sprint backlog
The subset of product backlog items selected for a sprint, plus the team's plan for delivering them and achieving the sprint goal.
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Sprint demo
A presentation at the end of a sprint where the development team demonstrates completed work to stakeholders and gathers feedback.
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Sprint goal
A concise statement of the single objective that the sprint achieves, providing focus and flexibility for the development team.
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Sprint planning
A collaborative ceremony at the start of each sprint where the team selects work from the backlog and creates a plan for delivering it.
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Sprint review
A ceremony at the end of each sprint where the team demonstrates completed work to stakeholders and collaboratively discusses what to do next.
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Stakeholder
Any individual, group, or organization that has an interest in or can be affected by a product, project, or decision.
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Stakeholder analysis
A systematic process for identifying stakeholders and assessing their interests, influence, and importance to inform engagement strategies.
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Stakeholder management
The ongoing process of identifying, analyzing, planning, and engaging with stakeholders to build support and manage expectations throughout a project or product lifecycle.
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Standup meeting
A brief daily team meeting where members synchronize their work, share progress, and identify blockers.
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Stickiness ratio (dau/mau)
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Story mapping
A visual technique for organizing user stories into a two-dimensional map that shows the user journey and helps prioritize releases.
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Story point
A unit of measure for estimating the relative effort required to implement a user story, considering complexity, risk, and work involved.
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Story points
A unit of measure for estimating the relative effort required to implement user stories, used for sprint planning and velocity tracking.
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Strategic product planning
The process of defining long-term product direction, aligning with business goals, and creating a framework for prioritizing development over time.
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Strategic roadmap
A high-level plan that communicates product direction and priorities over time, connecting features and initiatives to strategic objectives.
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Sunk cost
A cost that has already been incurred and cannot be recovered, which should not influence future decisions despite psychological tendency otherwise.
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Sustaining innovation
Incremental improvements to existing products that help companies serve their current customers better along existing performance dimensions.
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Swot analysis
A strategic planning framework that evaluates Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats to inform decision-making and strategy development.
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System design
The process of defining the architecture, components, modules, interfaces, and data flow of a system to satisfy specified requirements.
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T
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T-shaped skills
A professional skill profile combining deep expertise in one area with broad working knowledge across related disciplines.
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Tech stack
The combination of programming languages, frameworks, tools, and services used to build and run a software product.
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Technical debt
The implied cost of future rework caused by choosing expedient solutions now instead of better approaches that would take longer.
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Technical product manager
A product manager with deep technical expertise who works on infrastructure, platform, or developer-focused products.
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Technical spike
A time-boxed research activity to explore unknowns, reduce risk, or answer specific technical questions before committing to implementation.
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Test-driven development (tdd)
A software development practice where tests are written before the code they verify, driving design through a red-green-refactor cycle.
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The user is drunk
A design principle emphasizing that interfaces should be simple enough for someone with impaired attention or judgment to use successfully.
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Theme
A high-level strategic category that groups related features, initiatives, or work items around a common objective or area of focus.
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Throughput
The rate at which a team or system completes work, measured over a given time period.
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Time boxing
A time management technique that allocates fixed time periods to activities, forcing completion or decision-making when time expires.
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Time on task
A usability metric measuring how long users take to complete specific tasks, indicating interface efficiency and learnability.
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Time to first value (ttfv)
The duration from a user's first interaction with a product until they experience meaningful value, a critical metric for onboarding and activation.
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Time to market
The duration from product conception to market availability, measuring how quickly an organization can deliver new products or features to customers.
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Time to value (ttv)
The duration between a customer's purchase or signup and their realization of meaningful value from the product, critical for retention and satisfaction.
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Timeline roadmap
A roadmap format that displays planned work against a calendar, showing when features or initiatives are expected to be delivered.
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Top down product strategy
A strategic approach where product direction flows from executive vision and company objectives down through the organization to guide team priorities.
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Total addressable market (tam)
The total revenue opportunity available if a product achieved 100% market share, representing the maximum theoretical market size.
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Tree testing
A usability research method that evaluates information architecture by asking users to navigate a text-only hierarchy to find specific items.
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Tribe model management
An organizational structure grouping autonomous squads into tribes around related missions, popularized by Spotify's engineering culture.
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Turnover rate
The percentage of employees who leave an organization during a specific period, a key metric for organizational health and team stability.
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U
Term
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Unit economics
The direct revenues and costs associated with a single unit of a product or customer, used to evaluate business model viability.
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Unit testing
Testing individual components or functions in isolation to verify they work correctly before integration with other code.
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Uptime
The percentage of time a system or service is operational and available to users, typically measured over a given period.
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Usability testing
A research method where real users attempt tasks with a product to identify usability problems and improvement opportunities.
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Use case
A description of how a user interacts with a system to achieve a specific goal, documenting the steps and possible variations.
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User acceptance testing (uat)
The final testing phase where actual users verify that a system meets their requirements and is ready for production deployment.
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User acquisition
The process and strategies used to attract new users to a product, encompassing marketing, growth tactics, and conversion optimization.
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User acquisition cost (uac)
The total cost incurred to acquire a single new user, calculated by dividing acquisition spend by the number of users gained.
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User activation
The process of converting new signups into engaged users by guiding them to experience the product's core value quickly.
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User engagement metrics
Quantitative measures of how users interact with a product, including frequency, depth, and quality of their activities.
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User experience (ux)
The overall experience a person has when interacting with a product, encompassing usability, accessibility, efficiency, and emotional response.
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User feedback surveys
Structured questionnaires used to collect user opinions, satisfaction levels, and insights at scale to inform product decisions.
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User flow
A visual representation of the path users take through a product to complete a specific task or achieve a goal.
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User interface (ui)
The visual elements and interactive components through which users interact with a product, including layouts, buttons, typography, and icons.
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User interview
A qualitative research method involving direct conversation with users to understand their needs, behaviors, motivations, and experiences.
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User onboarding experience
The process and design of guiding new users from signup through their first meaningful experiences with a product.
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User persona
A fictional but research-based representation of a key user type, capturing their goals, behaviors, pain points, and characteristics.
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User research
The systematic study of users and their needs through various methods to inform product design and development decisions.
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User retention strategies
Tactics and approaches designed to keep users engaged and returning to a product over time, reducing churn and increasing lifetime value.
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User segmentation
The practice of dividing users into distinct groups based on shared characteristics, behaviors, or needs to enable targeted product decisions.
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User story
A short, simple description of a feature from the perspective of the user who desires it.
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Ux designer
A professional responsible for designing user experiences that are intuitive, efficient, and satisfying, through research, design, and testing.
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Ux research
The practice of studying users and their interactions with products to inform design decisions and improve user experience.
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Ux writing
The practice of crafting the words users encounter in digital products - buttons, labels, messages, and instructions - to guide and support their experience.
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V
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Value proposition
A clear statement that explains how a product solves customer problems, delivers benefits, and why customers should choose it over alternatives.
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Value stream mapping
A lean management technique that visualizes the flow of materials and information required to deliver a product or service to customers.
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Value vs complexity
A prioritization framework that evaluates potential work based on the value it delivers relative to the complexity required to implement it.
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Vanity metrics
Metrics that look impressive but don't correlate with business success or provide actionable insights for decision-making.
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Velocity
A measure of the amount of work a team completes during a sprint, typically expressed in story points, used for capacity planning and forecasting.
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Vertical scaling
Increasing system capacity by adding more power to existing machines - more CPU, memory, or storage - rather than adding more machines.
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Viral coefficient
A metric measuring how many new users each existing user brings to a product, indicating the product's organic growth potential through word-of-mouth.
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Voice of customer (voc)
A research approach that captures customers' expectations, preferences, and feedback to understand their needs and inform product decisions.
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Vp of product
A senior executive who leads the product management function, setting product strategy and managing product teams to achieve business objectives.
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W
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Waterfall
A sequential software development methodology where each phase must be completed before the next begins, flowing downward like a waterfall through requirements, design, implementation, testing, and deployment.
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Weekly active users (wau)
A metric measuring the number of unique users who engage with a product within a seven-day period, offering a balanced view between daily volatility and monthly lag.
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Weighted scoring
A prioritization method that evaluates options by scoring them against multiple criteria, with each criterion assigned a weight reflecting its relative importance.
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Weighted shortest job first (wsjf)
A prioritization technique from SAFe that calculates job priority by dividing the cost of delay by job duration, favoring high-value, quick-to-deliver work.
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What is a product
A product is anything offered to a market that satisfies a want or need, encompassing physical goods, digital services, experiences, and combinations thereof.
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What is captive product pricing
A pricing strategy where a core product is sold at a low margin while complementary consumables or accessories are priced at higher margins.
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What is customer validation
The process of testing whether a product concept, feature, or business model actually solves a real problem for real customers willing to pay for it.
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Win/loss analysis
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Wip limit
A constraint on the maximum number of work items allowed in a particular stage or across a workflow, used to improve flow and prevent overload.
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Wireframe
A low-fidelity visual representation of a user interface that outlines structure, layout, and functionality without detailed design or styling.
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Work in progress (wip)
The amount of work that has been started but not yet completed, a key metric in lean and agile methodologies for understanding flow and capacity.
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Working backward method
A product development approach, popularized by Amazon, that starts by defining the customer experience and works backward to determine what to build.
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Y
Term
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Z
Term
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Zero bug policy
A development practice where teams fix bugs immediately rather than adding them to a backlog, maintaining a consistently clean codebase.
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Zero-downtime deployment
A deployment strategy that updates production systems without any service interruption, ensuring continuous availability for users.
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