Product Management Glossary

UX (User Experience)

The overall quality of a user's interaction with a product — encompassing usability, accessibility, performance, and emotional response — not just visual design.

Wireframe

A low-fidelity visual representation of a product screen that shows layout and structure without visual design — used to communicate information architecture and user flows early in the design process.

Prototype

A simulated version of a product or feature — ranging from paper sketches to clickable Figma flows — used to test ideas with users before engineering investment.

Usability Testing

A user research method where participants attempt real tasks on a product while researchers observe — revealing where users struggle, get confused, or fail to complete their goals.

PRD (Product Requirements Document)

A written document that describes what a product or feature should do, why it exists, and how success will be measured — before engineering begins.

Agile

An iterative approach to software development that delivers working software in short cycles, embraces changing requirements, and prioritises collaboration over documentation.

Scrum

An Agile framework that organises work into fixed-length sprints (1–4 weeks) with defined roles, ceremonies, and artifacts to deliver working software iteratively.

Kanban

A visual workflow management method that limits work in progress, makes bottlenecks visible, and optimises for continuous flow rather than time-boxed sprints.

Product Backlog

A prioritised list of all work — features, bugs, improvements, and technical debt — that a product team intends to build, ordered by value and urgency.

Sprint

A fixed-length iteration (usually 1–2 weeks) in Scrum during which a team completes a set amount of work from the backlog and delivers a potentially shippable increment.

Technical Debt

The accumulated cost of shortcuts, deferred improvements, and suboptimal decisions made during development — paid back through slower delivery and higher bug rates.

Velocity

The average amount of work (in story points) a Scrum team completes per sprint, used to forecast how much can be delivered in future sprints.

Scope Creep

The gradual expansion of a project's scope beyond its original boundaries — through uncontrolled feature additions, unclear requirements, or stakeholder requests — without adjusting timeline or resources.

North Star Metric

A single metric that best captures the core value your product delivers to customers — and that the whole company optimises toward.

Churn Rate

The percentage of customers or revenue lost in a given period — the primary indicator of whether a product retains the value it delivers.

Retention Rate

The percentage of users who continue using a product over a defined time period — the most important signal of product-market fit and sustainable growth.

LTV (Lifetime Value)

The total revenue a business expects to earn from a single customer over the entire duration of the relationship.

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)

The total cost to acquire one new customer — including sales, marketing, and any related overhead — divided by the number of new customers acquired in a period.

NPS (Net Promoter Score)

A customer loyalty metric based on a single question — 'How likely are you to recommend us?' — scored 0–10, that classifies respondents as Promoters, Passives, or Detractors.

ARPU (Average Revenue Per User)

Total revenue divided by total active users in a period — a key indicator of monetisation efficiency and pricing power.

Conversion Rate

The percentage of users who complete a desired action — signup, upgrade, purchase, or feature activation — out of all users who had the opportunity to do so.

A/B Testing

A controlled experiment that compares two versions of a product element (A = control, B = variant) to determine which performs better on a defined metric.

Cohort Analysis

A technique that groups users who share a common characteristic (usually acquisition date) and tracks their behaviour over time to reveal retention, engagement, and revenue trends.

Funnel Analysis

A method of tracking user progression through a defined sequence of steps — from awareness to conversion — to identify where users drop off.

RICE Scoring

A quantitative feature prioritization framework that scores each initiative by Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort — producing a single number to rank your roadmap.

MoSCoW Method

A prioritization technique that classifies requirements into four categories — Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, and Won't Have — to scope a release against a fixed deadline.

Kano Model

A feature prioritization framework that classifies features into five categories based on their relationship between implementation and customer satisfaction — distinguishing 'must-haves' from 'delighters'.

ICE Scoring

A lightweight prioritization framework that scores initiatives by Impact, Confidence, and Ease — producing a simple rank-order without requiring per-feature reach estimates.

Jobs to Be Done (JTBD)

A framework that explains why customers buy products — not because of what the product is, but because of the progress they're trying to make in a specific situation.

Product-Market Fit

The degree to which a product satisfies strong market demand — characterised by organic growth, high retention, and users who would be 'very disappointed' if the product disappeared.

OKR (Objectives and Key Results)

A goal-setting framework where an Objective states what you want to achieve and Key Results define the measurable outcomes that prove you achieved it.

MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

The smallest version of a product that delivers enough value to attract early adopters and generate validated learning about your core assumptions.

Value Proposition

A clear statement of the specific benefit your product delivers, who it's for, and why it's better than the alternative.

Product Discovery

The process of determining what to build — through user research, prototyping, and testing — before committing engineering resources to delivery.

GTM Strategy (Go-To-Market)

The plan for how a company will reach its target customers and deliver its value proposition — covering positioning, channels, pricing, and sales motion.