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// Glossary

The product management glossary.

Clear, practical definitions of the terms, frameworks, and roles that show up across product discovery, strategy, prioritization, delivery, and growth — the language of building products with evidence.

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56 terms
A
AARRR (Pirate Metrics)Growth
A funnel of five growth stages: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue.
Acceptance CriteriaRequirements
The conditions a user story must meet to be considered complete and correct.
ActivationGrowth
The moment a new user first experiences the product's core value.
AgileAgile
An iterative approach to building products through small increments and continuous feedback.
Assumption MappingDiscovery
Listing the beliefs a product depends on and ranking them by risk so you test the riskiest first.
B
Backlog Grooming (Refinement)Backlog
The ongoing work of clarifying, splitting, estimating, and reordering backlog items.
Business AnalystPersonas
A role that bridges business needs and technical solutions by eliciting and documenting requirements.
Business Model CanvasStrategy
A one-page view of how a business creates, delivers, and captures value across nine blocks.
C
ChurnGrowth
The rate at which customers stop using or paying for a product.
Cohort AnalysisGrowth
Grouping users by a shared start point to see how behavior changes over time.
Competitive AnalysisDiscovery
Mapping rival and substitute solutions to find the gap where you can win.
Cost of DelayPrioritization
The economic cost of not doing something now — the value lost per unit of time.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)Growth
The total sales and marketing cost to acquire one new paying customer.
Customer InterviewDiscovery
A structured 1:1 conversation that captures how users really behave, in their own words.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)Growth
The total revenue (or profit) a customer generates over their entire relationship with a product.
D
Definition of Done (DoD)Requirements
A shared checklist of everything that must be true before work is considered complete.
Definition of Ready (DoR)Backlog
The criteria a backlog item must meet before a team will pull it into a sprint.
Dual-Track AgileAgile
Running continuous discovery and delivery in parallel so teams build the right thing and build it right.
E
Empathy MapDiscovery
A simple canvas capturing what a user thinks, feels, says, and does.
EpicBacklog
A large body of work that groups related user stories under one goal.
F
Feature AdoptionGrowth
The share of eligible users who discover and use a given feature.
FounderPersonas
An entrepreneur building a product and company from scratch, often without a dedicated product team.
G
Go-to-Market (GTM)Strategy
The plan for how a product reaches and wins customers across channels and pricing.
I
Impact-Effort MatrixPrioritization
A 2×2 that plots initiatives by expected impact against required effort.
INVESTBacklog
A checklist for good user stories: Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable.
J
Jobs to be Done (JTBD)Discovery
A lens that frames a product as the 'job' a customer hires it to do, focusing on outcomes over features.
K
KanbanAgile
A flow-based method that visualizes work and limits how much is in progress at once.
Kano ModelPrioritization
Classifying features by how they affect satisfaction: basic, performance, or delighter.
M
Minimum Viable Product (MVP)Strategy
The smallest version of a product that lets you learn the most about a key assumption.
MoSCoWPrioritization
Sorting requirements into Must, Should, Could, and Won't have.
N
Non-functional RequirementsRequirements
Requirements about how a system performs — speed, security, reliability — rather than what it does.
North Star MetricStrategy
The single metric that best captures the core value a product delivers to customers.
Now-Next-Later RoadmapRoadmap
A time-horizon roadmap format that avoids false precision by using three broad buckets.
O
OKRsRoadmap
Objectives and Key Results — a goal framework pairing an ambition with measurable outcomes.
P
PersonaDiscovery
A composite, evidence-based profile of a target user segment.
PositioningStrategy
Deliberately defining what your product is, who it's for, and why it's the best at something.
Pricing StrategyGrowth
How a product captures value through packaging, tiers, and price points.
Product BacklogBacklog
The ordered list of everything that might be done to improve a product.
Product DiscoveryDiscovery
The continuous work of deciding what to build by validating problems with real evidence before committing to a solution.
Product ManagerPersonas
The person accountable for a product's success, deciding what to build and why.
Product OwnerPersonas
The role that owns and prioritizes the backlog, turning strategy into buildable work for an agile team.
Product Requirements Document (PRD)Requirements
The document that defines what a product should do and why, for the team building it.
Product RoadmapRoadmap
A communication tool that shows how a product will evolve to deliver strategy over time.
Product StrategyStrategy
The set of choices about where to play and how to win that connects vision to execution.
Product VisionStrategy
The long-term future a product is trying to create, big enough to inspire and specific enough to believe.
Product-Market Fit (PMF)Strategy
The point where a product satisfies strong market demand, shown by retention and organic pull.
R
RetentionGrowth
The rate at which users keep coming back and continue to get value over time.
RICE ScoringPrioritization
A prioritization formula: Reach × Impact × Confidence ÷ Effort.
S
ScrumAgile
An agile framework that organizes work into fixed sprints with defined roles and ceremonies.
SprintBacklog
A short, fixed time-box in which a team completes a set of committed work.
T
TAM, SAM, SOMDiscovery
Three nested estimates of market size: total, serviceable, and realistically obtainable.
Target MarketStrategy
The specific group of customers a product is designed to serve first.
U
User StoryRequirements
A small, user-centered description of a need: as a role, I want an action, so that an outcome.
V
Value PropositionDiscovery
A clear statement of the specific value a product delivers to a specific customer.
Venture BuilderPersonas
A studio or operator that builds multiple products and startups in parallel from a shared playbook.
Vibe CoderPersonas
A builder who ships products fast with AI coding tools, often without formal product training.
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