📖Reference Guide

Product Management Glossary

100+ product management terms, frameworks, metrics, and methodologies defined clearly and concisely.

A

A/B Testing

A controlled experiment in which two or more variants of a page, feature, or flow are shown to different user segments at the same time to...

Research and Discovery

AARRR (Pirate Metrics)

A framework developed by Dave McClure that breaks the customer lifecycle into five stages: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, and...

Metrics

AI Alignment

The research and engineering discipline focused on ensuring AI systems behave in accordance with human values, intentions, and goals rather...

AI and Machine Learning

AI Copilot UX

A design pattern where AI augments human work as a collaborative assistant rather than replacing the human, with the user maintaining...

AI and Machine Learning

AI Design Patterns

Reusable solutions to common UX challenges in AI-powered products, including patterns for confidence display, progressive disclosure,...

AI and Machine Learning

AI Evaluation (Evals)

Systematic testing of AI system outputs against quality benchmarks, safety criteria, and task-specific metrics to measure performance and...

AI and Machine Learning

AI Safety

The research and engineering practices focused on preventing harmful AI behaviors, ensuring reliable operation under adversarial...

AI and Machine Learning

AI UX Design

The practice of designing user experiences for AI-powered products, addressing unique challenges like probabilistic outputs, user trust...

AI and Machine Learning

API-First Design

A development approach where the API contract is designed and agreed upon before building the implementation, enabling parallel development...

Delivery

ARR / MRR (Annual Recurring Revenue / Monthly Recurring Revenue)

ARR is the annualized value of all active subscription contracts, while MRR is the same figure on a monthly basis.

Core PM Concepts

ATS Optimization

The practice of formatting and keyword-optimizing a resume so it passes through Applicant Tracking Systems — the software that filters...

Career & Growth

Acceptance Criteria

A set of predefined conditions that a user story or feature must satisfy before it is considered complete and ready for release.

Delivery

Accessibility (a11y)

Designing products usable by people with disabilities, following standards like WCAG and legal mandates like ADA.

Research and Discovery

Activation Rate

The percentage of new users who complete a key action that correlates with long-term retention, often called the \\"aha moment.

Metrics

Affinity Diagram

A collaborative technique in which team members write observations, ideas, or data points on sticky notes (physical or digital) and then...

Research and Discovery

Agentic AI

AI systems that can autonomously plan, reason, and take sequential actions to achieve complex goals with minimal human intervention,...

AI and Machine Learning

Agentic UX

The design of user experiences for autonomous AI agents that plan and execute multi-step tasks, requiring new UX patterns for oversight,...

AI and Machine Learning

Agile

A family of iterative and incremental software development methodologies grounded in the Agile Manifesto (2001).

Core PM Concepts

Agile Coach

A role focused on helping teams adopt and improve agile practices across process, mindset, and team dynamics.

Career & Growth

Agile Estimation

Techniques for forecasting effort in agile teams, including story points, t-shirt sizes, and ideal days.

Delivery

Annual Contract Value (ACV)

The annualized revenue value of a single customer contract, used to normalize deals of varying lengths for comparison.

Metrics

Associate Product Manager (APM)

An entry-level product management role, typically for candidates with 0-2 years of experience, often structured as a rotational program at...

Career & Growth

B

C

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)

The total cost of sales and marketing efforts required to acquire a single new customer over a given period.

Metrics

CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery)

The practice of automatically building, testing, and preparing code changes for release, enabling faster and more reliable software...

Delivery

Canary Release

Deploying a change to a small subset of users first, monitoring for issues, then gradually rolling it out to everyone.

Delivery

Card Sorting

A user research method in which participants organize topic labels into categories that make sense to them, revealing their mental models.

Research and Discovery

Chain-of-Thought

A prompting technique that improves AI model reasoning by instructing it to break down complex problems into explicit, step-by-step...

AI and Machine Learning

Chief Product Officer (CPO)

The C-suite executive accountable for a company's entire product strategy, portfolio, and product management organization.

Career & Growth

Churn Rate

The percentage of customers or subscribers who stop using a product during a given time period.

Metrics

Cognitive Load

The mental effort required to use a product feature, measured across intrinsic, extraneous, and germane types.

Research and Discovery

Cohort Analysis

A method of grouping users by a shared characteristic -- most commonly sign-up date -- and tracking their behavior over time.

Metrics

Competitive Analysis

A structured evaluation of competitors' products, positioning, and strategies to inform your own product decisions.

Strategy

Competitive Intelligence

The ongoing collection, analysis, and distribution of competitor data to support product and go-to-market decisions.

Strategy

Competitive Moat

A sustainable competitive advantage that protects a company from rivals, analogous to the moat around a castle.

Strategy

Context Window

The maximum amount of text, measured in tokens, that a large language model can process in a single interaction, including both the input...

AI and Machine Learning

Contextual Inquiry

A field-based research method in which the researcher observes and interviews users in their natural work or life environment while they...

Research and Discovery

Continuous Delivery

A software engineering practice in which code changes are automatically built, tested, and prepared for release to production at any time.

Delivery

Conversational UX

A design paradigm where users interact with software through natural language dialogue rather than traditional graphical interfaces,...

AI and Machine Learning

Conversion Rate

The percentage of users who complete a desired action out of the total who had the opportunity.

Metrics

Cost of Delay

The economic impact of not delivering a feature or product sooner, measured as lost revenue, market share, or strategic position per unit...

Strategy

Cost-Benefit Analysis

A method for quantifying the costs and expected returns of a product initiative to inform investment decisions.

Strategy

Customer Advisory Board (CAB)

A structured group of 8-15 strategic customers who provide ongoing product feedback and validate roadmap direction.

Strategy

Customer Development

A methodology pioneered by Steve Blank in which founders and PMs systematically test business hypotheses by getting out of the building and...

Research and Discovery

Customer Effort Score (CES)

A metric measuring how easy it is for customers to accomplish tasks and resolve issues with your product.

Metrics

Customer Journey Map

A visual representation of every touchpoint a customer has with a product or company, from initial awareness through purchase, onboarding,...

Research and Discovery

Customer Onboarding

The process of guiding new users from signup to their first meaningful value moment in your product.

Strategy

Customer Segmentation

Dividing your customer base into distinct groups based on shared characteristics to make targeted product and marketing decisions.

Strategy

D

DAU / MAU (Daily Active Users / Monthly Active Users)

DAU is the count of unique users who engage with a product on a given day; MAU is the same over a 30-day window.

Core PM Concepts

Data Flywheel

A self-reinforcing cycle where product usage generates data that improves the AI model, which improves the product experience, which drives...

AI and Machine Learning

Decision Matrix

A scored comparison table for evaluating options against weighted criteria to make structured decisions.

Strategy

Definition of Done (DoD)

A shared agreement within a team that specifies all conditions a piece of work must meet before it can be considered complete -- for...

Delivery

Definition of Ready (DoR)

A checklist of conditions a user story must meet before a team commits to working on it in a sprint.

Delivery

Demand Generation

The process of creating awareness and interest that drives qualified pipeline for a product.

Strategy

Dependency

A relationship in which one piece of work, team, or system relies on another to proceed.

Core PM Concepts

Design Debt

The accumulated UX inconsistencies and design shortcuts that degrade the user experience over time.

Research and Discovery

Design Sprint

A five-day structured process created at Google Ventures for rapidly solving big product problems through ideation, prototyping, and user...

Frameworks

Design System

A collection of reusable UI components, patterns, and guidelines that ensure consistent product design at scale.

Research and Discovery

Design System for AI

An extension of traditional design systems that includes components, patterns, and guidelines specifically for AI-powered features,...

AI and Machine Learning

Design Thinking

A human-centered problem-solving methodology popularized by IDEO and Stanford's d.

Frameworks

DevOps

A set of practices that unifies software development and IT operations to shorten delivery cycles and improve reliability.

Delivery

Diary Study

A longitudinal research method in which participants record their experiences, behaviors, and thoughts over a period of days or weeks using...

Research and Discovery

Discovery (Product Discovery)

The ongoing practice of determining what to build by understanding customer problems, validating assumptions, and evaluating solutions...

Core PM Concepts

Double Diamond

A design process model from the UK Design Council that visualizes work in four phases across two diamonds: Discover (diverge), Define...

Frameworks

Dual-Track Agile

An approach in which a product team runs two parallel tracks: a discovery track (exploring problems and validating solutions) and a...

Core PM Concepts

E

F

Fake Door Test

A discovery technique in which a button, link, or menu item for a feature that does not yet exist is presented to users.

Research and Discovery

Feature Adoption

The percentage of active users who have used a specific feature at least once (or on a recurring basis, depending on definition).

Metrics

Feature Creep

The uncontrolled expansion of a product's feature set beyond its original scope, often driven by stakeholder requests, competitive...

Delivery

Feature Factory

A pejorative term for a product team that churns out features based on stakeholder requests without validating whether those features solve...

Core PM Concepts

Feature Flag

A software mechanism that allows teams to enable or disable a feature for specific user segments without deploying new code.

Delivery

Few-Shot Learning

A technique where AI models learn to perform tasks from just a small number of examples provided in the prompt, without requiring...

AI and Machine Learning

Fine-Tuning

The process of further training a pre-trained AI model on a smaller, task-specific dataset to adapt its behavior and improve performance...

AI and Machine Learning

First-Mover Advantage

The competitive benefit gained by being the first company to enter a new market or create a new product category.

Strategy

Flywheel Effect

A concept from Jim Collins describing a self-reinforcing cycle in which each component of a business model feeds and accelerates the next,...

Strategy

Foundation Model

Large pre-trained AI models trained on broad datasets that can be adapted through fine-tuning or prompting for a wide variety of downstream...

AI and Machine Learning

Freemium

A pricing model in which a basic version of the product is offered for free while advanced features, higher usage tiers, or premium support...

Strategy

Function Calling

A large language model capability that enables AI to invoke external tools, APIs, and services based on natural language input, bridging...

AI and Machine Learning

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M

Market Positioning

Where your product sits relative to competitors in customers' minds, defined by the value you deliver to a specific audience.

Strategy

Market Research

Systematic gathering and analysis of data about a target market, including customer needs, competitors, and market dynamics.

Research and Discovery

Market Sizing (TAM / SAM / SOM)

Three nested lenses for estimating market opportunity.

Strategy

Metric (Leading vs. Lagging)

Leading metrics predict future outcomes while lagging metrics measure past results. Product teams track both to understand performance and...

Core PM Concepts

Microservices

An architecture pattern where an application is built as a collection of small, independently deployable services, each owning a specific...

Delivery

Minimum Lovable Product (MLP)

The smallest version of a product that customers will love -- not just tolerate -- enough to recommend to others.

Delivery

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

The smallest version of a product that can be released to test a key business hypothesis with real users.

Core PM Concepts

MoSCoW Prioritization

A prioritization technique that categorizes requirements into four buckets: Must Have (non-negotiable for launch), Should Have (important...

Core PM Concepts

Model Distillation

A technique for creating smaller, faster, and cheaper AI models by training them to replicate the behavior of larger, more capable models...

AI and Machine Learning

Model Drift

The gradual degradation of an AI model performance over time as real-world data patterns, user behavior, and business conditions change...

AI and Machine Learning

Multi-Agent Systems

Architectures where multiple specialized AI agents collaborate, delegate, and coordinate to solve complex tasks that exceed the capability...

AI and Machine Learning

Multimodal AI

AI systems that can process, understand, and generate multiple types of data including text, images, audio, video, and code within a...

AI and Machine Learning

Multimodal UX

The design of user experiences that seamlessly combine multiple input and output modalities -- text, voice, image, gesture, and video --...

AI and Machine Learning

Multivariate Testing

An experimentation method that tests multiple variables simultaneously to find the best-performing combination.

Research and Discovery

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O

P

PM Career Ladder

A structured progression framework that defines product management levels from APM through CPO, including the skills, scope, and impact...

Career & Growth

PM Portfolio

A curated collection of case studies, product teardowns, and side projects that demonstrates product management thinking and skills to...

Career & Growth

PRD (Product Requirements Document)

A document that articulates the purpose, features, behavior, and constraints of a product or feature for the development team.

Core PM Concepts

Partner Ecosystem

The network of integrations, resellers, and complementary products built around your platform.

Strategy

Persona

A research-based archetype representing a segment of the target user population.

Research and Discovery

Phased Rollout

Gradually releasing a feature to increasing user segments, monitoring health metrics at each stage before expanding further.

Delivery

Planning Poker

An estimation technique where team members simultaneously reveal point estimates to avoid anchoring bias.

Delivery

Platform Strategy

A business model in which the company creates value by facilitating interactions between two or more distinct user groups (e.

Strategy

Porter's Five Forces

Michael Porter's framework for analyzing five competitive forces that shape industry profitability and strategy.

Frameworks

Positioning

The deliberate process of defining how a product should be perceived in the minds of the target audience relative to competitors.

Strategy

Predictive Analytics

Using historical data and statistical models to forecast future user behavior and product outcomes.

Metrics

Pricing Strategy

The approach a product team uses to set, structure, and evolve pricing to capture value and drive growth.

Strategy

Prioritization

The process of deciding what to build next from a pool of competing opportunities, balancing factors like user impact, business value,...

Core PM Concepts

Problem Statement

A concise articulation of the user problem a team is trying to solve, typically framed from the user's perspective.

Research and Discovery

Product Designer

A designer who owns the end-to-end user experience for a product area, from research through interaction design to visual polish.

Career & Growth

Product Development

The end-to-end process of conceiving, designing, building, and launching a product -- from idea to users' hands.

Core PM Concepts

Product Development Lifecycle (PDLC)

The stages a product goes through from initial idea to shipped feature: ideation, definition, design, build, test, launch.

Core PM Concepts

Product Differentiation

What makes your product meaningfully different from alternatives in a way that matters to your target customers.

Strategy

Product Lifecycle

The four stages a product passes through from launch to discontinuation: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.

Frameworks

Product Management

The discipline of guiding a product from conception to market success by balancing user needs, business goals, and technical constraints.

Core PM Concepts

Product Ops (Product Operations)

A function that supports product teams by streamlining tools, processes, data access, and communication so PMs can focus on discovery and...

Core PM Concepts

Product Owner

The Scrum role responsible for maximizing product value by managing and prioritizing the product backlog.

Career & Growth

Product Portfolio

The collection of products a company manages as a unified set of investments with distinct strategic roles.

Strategy

Product Sense

The ability to identify problems worth solving, evaluate solutions users will adopt, and make sound product decisions without complete data.

Career & Growth

Product Strategy

The plan that connects a company's vision and business objectives to the specific product decisions the team makes.

Strategy

Product Trio

A cross-functional leadership model in which the product manager, the tech lead (or engineering manager), and the product designer...

Core PM Concepts

Product Vision

A concise statement describing the future state your product aims to create for its users and the market.

Frameworks

Product-Led Growth (PLG)

A go-to-market strategy in which the product itself is the primary driver of acquisition, conversion, expansion, and retention.

Core PM Concepts

Product-Led Sales (PLS)

A GTM motion where free product usage generates qualified leads for a sales team to close.

Strategy

Product-Market Fit

The state in which a product satisfies a strong market demand, evidenced by organic growth, high retention, and enthusiastic word-of-mouth.

Core PM Concepts

Progressive Disclosure

A design pattern that reduces cognitive load by showing only essential information first, then revealing additional complexity as users...

Research and Discovery

Prompt Engineering

The practice of designing and refining inputs to AI models to elicit more accurate, relevant, and useful outputs for specific tasks and use...

AI and Machine Learning

Prototype

A preliminary model of a product or feature used to explore ideas and test assumptions before building production code.

Research and Discovery

Q

R

RACI Matrix

A framework that clarifies decision roles by assigning Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed status to each stakeholder.

Frameworks

RICE Framework

A prioritization framework developed at Intercom that scores initiatives on four factors: Reach (how many users will be affected), Impact...

Frameworks

Red-Teaming

An adversarial testing methodology where testers deliberately attempt to find vulnerabilities, failure modes, and harmful outputs in AI...

AI and Machine Learning

Refactoring

Restructuring existing code to improve its internal quality without changing its external behavior, reducing future development costs.

Delivery

Regression Testing

Testing existing functionality after code changes to verify that previously working features have not been broken.

Delivery

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)

A training method where human evaluators rate AI model outputs, and those preference signals are used to fine-tune the model to produce...

AI and Machine Learning

Release Management

The process of planning, scheduling, coordinating, and controlling software releases across environments and teams.

Delivery

Release Planning

The process of mapping features to target releases across multiple sprints, balancing scope, quality, and timing.

Delivery

Release Train

A fixed-cadence delivery model where multiple teams align on a shared schedule to release increments of a product together at regular...

Delivery

Responsible AI

Frameworks and practices ensuring AI systems are developed and deployed ethically, fairly, transparently, and with accountability for their...

AI and Machine Learning

Retention Rate

The percentage of users or customers who continue to use a product over a defined period.

Metrics

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)

An AI architecture pattern that combines large language models with external knowledge retrieval to generate responses grounded in...

AI and Machine Learning

Retrospective (Retro)

A team meeting held at the end of a sprint or project in which participants reflect on what went well, what did not, and what should be...

Delivery

Revenue Model

The strategy a product uses to generate income, defining what customers pay for and how they pay.

Strategy

Revenue Per User (ARPU)

Average Revenue Per User is calculated by dividing total revenue by the number of active users or accounts over a given period.

Metrics

Roadmap

A strategic communication artifact that conveys the planned direction and priorities for a product over time.

Delivery

S

SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework)

A framework for scaling Agile practices across large enterprises with many teams.

Frameworks

STAR Method

A structured response format — Situation, Task, Action, Result — used for behavioral interview answers and resume bullet points in product...

Career & Growth

SWOT Analysis

A strategic planning framework that evaluates Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats for a product or business.

Frameworks

Sales Enablement

How product teams arm sales with the content, tools, and training needed to sell effectively against competitors.

Strategy

Scenario Planning

A strategic technique that develops multiple plausible future scenarios to stress-test product decisions and strategy.

Frameworks

Scope Creep

The gradual, unplanned expansion of a project's scope after work has begun, typically through incremental additions that each seem small...

Delivery

Scrum

An Agile framework that structures work into fixed-length iterations called sprints (typically two weeks).

Core PM Concepts

Segmentation Analysis

Analyzing product metrics across different user segments to uncover behavioral differences that drive strategy.

Metrics

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

A contractual commitment between a service provider and customer specifying uptime, performance, and support response guarantees.

Delivery

Shape Up

A product development methodology created at Basecamp that organizes work into six-week cycles followed by a two-week cooldown.

Frameworks

Spike

A time-boxed research or investigation task in Agile development, used to answer a question or resolve uncertainty before committing to a...

Delivery

Sprint

A fixed-length iteration, usually one to four weeks, during which a Scrum team commits to completing a set of backlog items and delivering...

Core PM Concepts

Sprint Planning

A Scrum event held at the start of each sprint in which the team selects items from the product backlog, discusses how they will be...

Delivery

Sprint Review

The ceremony at the end of a sprint where the team demonstrates completed work to stakeholders and collects feedback.

Delivery

Stakeholder Management

The practice of identifying, communicating with, and influencing the people and groups who have an interest in or authority over a...

Core PM Concepts

Stand-up (Daily Scrum)

A brief daily meeting -- typically 15 minutes or less -- in which each team member shares what they did yesterday, what they plan to do...

Delivery

Story Mapping

A technique developed by Jeff Patton in which user stories are arranged in a two-dimensional map.

Frameworks

Story Points

A unit of measure for estimating the relative effort, complexity, and uncertainty of a user story.

Delivery

Survey

A quantitative research method that collects structured responses from a large number of users through a set of questions, often delivered...

Research and Discovery

Switching Cost

The effort, expense, or inconvenience a customer incurs when changing from one product to a competitor.

Strategy

Synthetic Data

Artificially generated data that mimics real-world data patterns, used to train, test, and validate AI models when authentic data is...

AI and Machine Learning

Synthetic Users

AI-generated simulations of user personas that can be interviewed, surveyed, or tested against to supplement real user research, with...

AI and Machine Learning

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