Glossary

A launch blocking feature. The product will not launch without it

A nice to have feature at launch, but not required. If not present at launch it should be a fast follow

A desirable feature

Unlikely to get built

Product Requirements Doc. A document written by a product manager that describes why a product should be built and what the product should do, as well as how to measure success of the product.

A document that describes when specific products and features will be built.

Program Manager. A person who helps a variety of teams (engineering, design, ops, etc) execute against the product roadmap. A program manager keeps the team productive and on track, as well as flags risks.

Technical Program Manager. A more technical program manager, who works closely with engineering teams to execute against the product roadmap. A TPM is more involved in the technical details of software development.

Quality Assurance. A team that creates test plans and tests your product to identify and prevent bugs and issues from entering production and affecting users.

Public Relations. A team that helps you tell the story about your product with the public and media.

Internationalization. A team and/or process that helps you bring your product to new markets around the globe.

Something that results in a process being less expensive to complete (shorter amount of time, less money, etc).

Total Addressable Market. A measure of the revenue opportunity for a product.

Average Revenue per User. The average amount of revenue you receive for each user you have, usually measured by year.

Return On Investment. The ratio between the net profit and amount of investment. A high ROI indicates more impact with less effort.

The amount of time that it takes for a product to recoup the initial investment required to build it

A small group of people you can present concepts to in order to see how they react. Generally this will be a diverse group of people and you will have specific questions you’d like to get their feedback on.

A representation of a group of users with shared characteristics.

Minimum Viable Product. An early version of your product with minimal features that you can take to market in order to get feedback

Key Performance Indicator. KPIs can be used to measure the success of the products.

A source of revenue for a company, mostly commonly transaction based or recurring events

A type of revenue model that generates recurring revenue. Users pay a fee on an ongoing basis in exchange for access to your product.

A revenue model that generates transaction based revenue. Users purchase a one time license to use your software on an ongoing basis

A revenue model that generates transaction based revenue. Users pay a fee every time they use your product.

A revenue model that gives a small part of your product away at no cost to users with the ultimate goal of converting users to paid users in order to gain access to the full product.

Cost per click

Cost per 1000 impressions

Click through rate

The Greek word for character, describing the credibility of an individual

The Greek word for reason or logic

The Greek word for emotion

Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement. If negotiations were to fail, BATNA is the next best option

A design thinking based time constrained process to explore and reduce the risk of building new products or features. Design Sprints are most often discussed in the context of product development but can also be applied to internal process improvement

A human centered, iterative approach to solve problems through deeply understanding users and needs, redefining problems, creating innovative solutions, and testing them

A short presentation focused on a specific topic

A method to frame problems as solutions

A method to visually classify aspects of a topic as being positive, an opportunity, or negative

A method to sort ideas and insights into themes

Lightning Talk

A lightning talk is a short presentation, usually about 20 minutes, focused on a specific topic.

• User research

  • Who is the user?

  • What are their needs and goals?

  • Why does this problem matter to users?

• Business goals

  • What are we trying to solve?

  • Why does it matter?

  • What have we tried in the past?

  • What’s worked well and not so well?

• Technology

  • What are our technical capabilities?

  • What are the limits and constraints or limitations on our existing tech?

Interviews

Interviews allow you to gain perspectives from a number of different vantage points. There are lots of types of interviews you can set up including:

• User interviews

  • Build empathy for users

  • Get a deeper understanding of user needs and pain points

• Stakeholder interviews

  • Dive deeper into some of the reasoning, rationale, and context of why this specific problem is important to solve

  • Topics can include any previous efforts to solve this or a similar problem

• Expert interviews

  • Provide specialized insights around a specific problem, population, or technology

  • Can be either internal or external

Competitive Analysis

Get a better understanding of the competition and other solutions that exist in the problem space by:

• Doing research, including checking out websites and press materials

• Reading reviews

• Using the product and recording your experience

Keep in mind…

Just because a competitor built something a certain way doesn’t mean it was the right thing to build or that it was built the right way.

A way to measure whether or not your project achieved its goals

A framework which was created at Google to measure quality of user experience at scale

something that a user is trying to accomplish

behavior (i.e.: generally something a user would do) that allows you to tell if a user achieved their goal

measurement of a signal

A framework that guides the way that you think about building your product

a sketching activity that will quickly generate a lot of ideas

a high quality sketch that illustrates how a user interacts with the product to achieve their goal

A method to visualize the trade offs between different ideas

A method to ensure that different perspectives are being discussed

A map of a user's experience with a product

A model of the most critical features of a product

The user you are designing your product for and the user you expect to use it

A confidentiality agreement that prevents someone from disclosing specific information they were given access to, for example an upcoming product roadmap or featureset

Someone who studies the behavior of users