Product Management Glossary

_{Essential Product Management terms & concepts.}

A

A/B Test

Test hypotheses and impact new features by splitting traffic into a control group and one or more variants, to measure impact upon behavioral metrics.

AARRR Metrics

The 'pirate metrics' (AARRR) by Dave McClure describes the key steps of the funnel: Acquisition Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue.

Acceptance Criteria

Product requirements often carry a checklist of outcomes that describe a successful solution for both design and testing purposes.

Action Priority Matrix

A 2x2 matrix for stratifying impact and effort, to identify which projects to work on.

Affinity Group

A group of people with common interests or needs, that may be represented by a customer segment or persona.

Agile Manifesto

The Agile Manifesto is a simple document that defines the fundamental values and principles of the Agile software movement.

Agile Product Development

An iterative approach to product development that emphasizes the definition and delivery of small units of value, as a counterpoint to traditional Waterfall methodology.

Agile Roadmap

A simple roadmap that expressed broad themes of focus in a Kanban fashion, describing what will be worked on ‘now’, ‘next’, and ‘later’, in lieu of a traditional timeline format.

Agile Transformation

The process of migrating an organization away from traditional top-down and waterfall methods, toward a more iterative and empowered Agile model.

ARR

Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) describes the recurring subscription revenue coming in fr a year, normalized for a single calendar year.

ARPU

Annual Revenue Per User is calculated by dividing total annual revenue by the number of customers.

Assumption Mapping

A 2x2 matrix that compares importance on one axis and what is known on the other axis. The idea is to identify where focus is needed.

B

Backlog Grooming

The process of revising the stories and tasks in a backlog, to prioritize, de-dupe, and prepare emergent stories for work.

Balanced Portfolio

Managing a portfolio of multiple products requires attention to the synergies across all products and balancing growth with revenue.

Beta Testing

Releasing an early version of a product to a limited audience in order to test, find and fix issues, and validate product-market fit.

Bill of Materials

A term used in physical and enterprise product development. The BOM is a list of all pieces and parts necessary to manufacture a product.

Boulders, Stones, Pebbles

A metaphor describing the three layers of product analysis and planning. Boulders are major themes, stones are projects, and pebbles are requirements.

Business Analyst

A contributor role in traditional Waterfall development that has requirements analysis and definition responsibility, but does not have the ownership or decision authority of Product Management.

Business Intelligence

A tech-driven group sitting within business, that collects, measures and analyzes data about business performance, creating strategic dashboards and reports for the organization.

Business Model Archetypes

A simplified framework of 7 primary business models, described in a similar way to Carl Jung’s fundamental personality types.

Business Model Canvas

A visual canvas for describing the key aspects of a business. This is analogous to an Agile approach to creating a business plan.

Buy a Feature

A prioritization game that can be played with stakeholders, to elicit their sense of priority. It uses the metaphor of limited money to ask what features they’d buy.

Buyer Persona

The buyer persona describes the needs and behaviors of the people who make purchase decisions for a product, not necessarily the users of that product.

C

Cannibalization

When trying to create incremental revenue, there is always a risk of ‘cannibalizing’ existing revenue, meaning that new revenue comes at the expense of existing revenue.

Certification

College extension programs and trade schools provide certificates of completion, indicating a baseline knowledge of a given skill of career such as Product Management.

Chief Product Officer (CPO)

An executive-level role Product Management, that is increasingly common at product-centric organizations. Leads the Product team and represents Product planning to the board.

Churn

Churn refers to the rate of loss of subscribers over time. The average subscriber for example might ‘churn out’ in 3 months time.

CIRCLES Method

A framework popularized for Google interviews that starts with understanding market needs and thus determine the right tings to work on.

Continuous Delivery

Building on Agile principles, Continuous Delivery makes it possible for teams to push out incremental updates as they are completed, rather than waiting for planned groups of features to be ready.

Continuous Discovery

Ongoing and incremental discovery that is based on the principles of Lean product development that we should seek to learn and validate early and often.

Conversion Rate

The rate that customers complete a goal, Typically this refers to the rate of new visitors converting to paying customers.

Competitive Analysis

Compare competing products for market traction, strength of the company and feature gaps. This provides insights for product strategy.

Cross-Functional Team

A team comprised of all the skills necessary to achieve a desired out couple. For example, a digital product team may include an API engineer, web and mobile developers, and a UX designer.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

A marketing metric that distills the specifics of marketing channels to simply see how much it cost to acquire a new paying customer.

Customer Empathy

Understanding customers at a deeper level and the ‘why’ behind their needs, desires, and behaviors.

Customer Experience

CX describes the whole of the customer’s experience including not just usability of the UI, also operational aspects such as customer care phone calls and receiving the product.

Customer Journey Map

A simply diagram that describes the steps a cohort of users take when interacting with the product, and what their needs are at each step of that journey.

A description of the 3-5 key user groups a product serves and their needs, desires, motivations, and behaviors. This helps build user empathy and ensure the experience and features reflect the customers being served.

D

DACI Roles

A framework for clarifying who on a tea or project will Drive, Approve, Contribute, and otherwise needs to be Informed.

Daily Active User (DAU)

The total number of users that engage with a product in a given day.

Definition of Done (DoD)

The set of activities assumed to be completed by the team when something is said to be ‘done’. For example, is QA or documentation completed?

Dependency

Projects and software often depend on upstream activities to be completed, in order to complete the current projects or software.

Design Ops

Orchestrating the activities of a design team by looking at people and process and how to make efficient with things like design systems.

Design Thinking

A human-centered approach that starts with understanding the problem and working through to the solution, including the steps of: empathizing, definition, ideation, prototyping, and testing.

Digital Transformation

The transition of traditional businesses into the digital era, incorporating current technology to optimize process and lower cost.

Double Diamond Planning

A model that describes divergence and convergence as part of the producers of both problem and solution definition.

Dual Track Agile

Built upon the idea of continuous discovery, Dual Track describes how discovery should happen in parallel to development and to feed the next development sprint.

E

Eisenhower Matrix

A 2x2 matrix that compares urgency on one axis and importance on the other, to determine what needs to be done versus what can be delegated or deferred.

Empowered Product Team

Product teams that focus on outcomes rather than output are trusted by their organization and able to determine the right features to build, in order to achieve an outcome.

F

Feature

A significant capability of a product that isn’t directly monetized. A product by comparison is a collection of features that someone pays for.

Feature-Driven Development

A customer-centric sub-method of Agile that emphasizes delivery of useful and usable features, rather than stories or tickets.

Feature Bloat

An anti-pattern in which a team continues to add more features without necessarily adding proportionate value for users, sometimes even making the product harder to use in the process.

Feature Factory

An anti-pattern in product teams wherein Product Managers are tasked with delivery not strategy and as a result are positioned to generate feature bloat rather than thinking strategically about the product.

Feature Flag

A variable is set in the code that allows a new feature to be ‘flagged’ on or off. This allows technical teams to deploy code, independent of when Product wants to strategically release the feature.

Feature Gap Analysis

A strategic exercise in which a Product team will catalog the major features of key competitors and compare how their product stacks up, looking for critical gaps that need to be filled.

Feature-less Roadmap

A theme-based roadmap intentionally abstracts away from specific features, instead indicating rough timeframes for exploring problems spaces, thus allowing the team some room to determine which features to build.

Fibonacci Estimation

A sequence of numbers that starts with one and each subsequent number is the product of the prior two numbers, creates a non-sequential set of values that Agile teams often use for estimating story points during backlog grooming.

Five Forces

Michael Porter’s famous competitive strategic framework defines the 5 different market dynamics that an organization needs to consider, in order to prevail in the marketplace.

G

Gantt chart

A visual time-based plan devised by Henry Gantt, that is commonly used in Waterfall project planning, to determine a sequence of tasks necessary to achieve an outcome. Time-based product roadmaps are a non-specific abstraction of the Gantt chart.

General Availability

Major feature releases often go in steps, starting with Limited Availability (LA) for a small audience, and finishing with full release to everyone, known as General Availability (GA).

Generic Competitive Strategies

Michael Porter defines a 2x2 matrix with scope of market on one axis and competitive advantage along the other. The result are 4 broad-based strategic postures that a business can adopt.

GIST Planning

The GIST planning model is similar to the CIRCLES method in that it starts with an outcome and derives subsequent planning insights,proceeding froim Goals > Ideas > Steps (projects) > Tasks.

Go-To-Market Strategy

The product marketing plan for how a new product will be introduced to a market, encompassing how the product is positioned and launched, to the key channels and messaging to be used.

Growth-Share Matrix

Created by Bruce Henderson at BCG, this is a 2x2 matrix that compares growth rate on one axis and market share on the other. The goal is to describe how products in a portfolio perform and where to make strategic investment.

H

Heart Metrics

The HEART framework was developed by Google and refers to a set of goals and metrics commonly used by Customer Experience, UX, and Care teams.

Hooked method

A methodology rooted in Psychology and developed by Nir Eyal, that describes how to convert internal triggers to internal product featured that keep people coming back.

Hype Cycle

Gartner Hype Cycle describes the lifecycle of tech adoption, starting with extreme enthusiasm followed by disillusionment, and finally finding a realistic equilibrium, once understood.

I

ICE Scoring

A rubric-based scoring framework developed by Sean Ellis for determining prioritization. The rubric is simply: Impact x Confidence x Effort.

Impact Mapping

A framework for brainstorming work to be done by mapping out what actions to take by starting with a goal, and working through the actors and impacts, to arrive at deliverables.

Innovation Adoption Curve

A visual model developed by Everett Rogers that describes the entrance of new technology into a market, and its adoption by early adopters, the majority, and laggards over time.

Innovation Ambition Matrix

A visual matrix that compares new market and new product opportunities, and transposes three layers upon that intersection - the core Adjacent innovation, and transformational opportunities.

Iteration

A core principal of Agile methodology is working in small ’chunks’ in order to create value faster, rather than expecting define everything before beginning.

J

Jira

A popular Agile-oriented, ticket-based work management system by Atlassian. Jira is used by most product development teams today.

Jobs to be Done (JTBD)

Popularized by Clayton Christiansen, Jobs to be Done is a framework for considering product-market fit by thinking of a product as being hired to do a job for a user, and considering what’s needed from that perspective.

K

Kanban

A simple framework for managing work to be done that is borrowed by Just In Time manufacturing and popular in Lean mythology. Work is simply moved between 3 columns: ‘To Do’, ‘Doing’, and ‘Done’.

Kanban Roadmap

Rather than a timeline-based roadmap, a Kanban roadmap is inspired by Kanban task management and looks at what larger initiatives need to be done instead of work tasks, organizing them into 3 columns: ‘Now’, ‘Next’, and ‘Later’.

Kano Model

A model for considering product-market fit from Noriaki Kano that suggests there is a juxtaposed relationship between features that delight and those that are ‘must haves’, and a linear decay over time for delights as they become ubiquitous.

KPIs

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are top-level metrics in business that are used to measure achievement of targets for specific goals.

L

Launch Plan

A planned event by introduce a new product or major new feature. This can incorporate go-to-market planning (channels & message) as well as beta, feedback/validation and release.

Lean Methodology

Lean emphasizes small batch development and frequent outreach to customers to learn their needs and validate market fit, in order to adapt as quickly and inexpensively as possible.

Lifetime Value (LTV)

A popular KPI that measures the revenue that is earned for an average customer, considering that a user may make multiple purchases or subscribe for multiple terms, over time.

Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS)

An alternative to the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) for scaling Agile to meet the needs of enterprise teams.

M

Magic Quadrant

Gartner's Magic Quadrant identifies companies with strong vision and ability to execute - identifying the leaders and laggards of an industry.

McKinsey Matrix

Compares the attractiveness of markets and strength of businesses to determine whether one should invest or divest as part of a portfolio.

McKinsey 3 Horizons

A model for portfolio allocation over the core business, incremental, and significant innovation horizons, typically with a 70/20/10 allocation.

Market Mix (4Ps)

The marketing mix, also know as the ‘4 P’s’ is a classic Marketing framework describing the four aspects that must be considered: Product, Price, Promotion, and Placement.

Monthly Active Users (MAU)

A popular KPI that measures the number of unique users that a digital product sees in a given month.

Minimal Lovable Product (MLP)

Whereas Minimal Viable Product (MVP) has been criticized for delivering mediocre products, MLP suggests a higher bar for delivering an initial product - something that is sufficient for users to love it.

Minimal Viable Product (MVP)

A key concept of lean product development, the MVP is the smallest scope of a product necessary to validate product-market fit and learn from the market before deciding what to build next.

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

A popular KPI that measures the amount of recurring revenue (not new or one-time revenue) for a given month.

MoSCoW Prioritization

MoSCoW is a play on an acronym for a framework that stratifies requirements into four groups, to determine what needs to be built near-term. It includes Most-Have, Should-Have, Could-Have, and Won't Have.

N

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

A popular KPI that measures customer satisfaction by comparison of 'promoters' versus 'detractors' by surveying users about how happy they are with the product.

Net Present Value (NPV)

A method of forecasting future value of an investment for business-level investment decision and prioritization

Northstar Metric

Amplitude's Northstar Framework describes a single metric that matters and sub-metrics by breaking down breath, depth, frequency, and efficiency.

Network Effects

A communications/network business becomes exponentially more valuable as more people participate (Metcalfe's Law).

O

Objectives

Similar to goals but more specific and actionable, often following the SMART principles. Objectives are particularly meaningful when practicing OKRs.

OKRs

Objectives and Key Results is a framework for aligning the objectives of everyone in an organization. An objective provided by a manager and the team member responds with key results they intend to deliver in response.

Opportunity Solution Tree

A visual aid that facilitates in brainstorming and collaboration. It is similar to a mind map but specific to the opportunities identified to improve a product.

Opportunity Space

The opportunity space refers to that work space of discovering opportunities for new products or new markets.

Outcome-Based Roadmap

Alternative to traditional feature-based roadmap, this plans with loose time horizons around output rather than outcomes.

P

PERT chart

The Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) uses a visual representation of of a projects timeline and the dependency of tasks.

Pivot

In Lean methodology, the goal is to build and deploy small increments to get market feedback. When feedback suggests poor fit, you may ‘pivot’ to another approach that is better validated by your learnings.

Planning Poker

A collaborative game that may be used during a team’s backlog grooming session, to estimate the size of user stories using poker cards.

Platform Product Manager

Traditional Product Management is rooted in user and market research in order to find market fit. Platform Product Mgmt by comparison is more technical and internally oriented for its strategy and vision.

Problem Space

The ‘problem space’ is the area Product focuses on, doing user and market research while the technical and design teams focus more on the ‘solution space’.

Product (what is it?)

A product is a collection of features that create enough value that customers will pay to gain access to it.

Product Analytics

A collection of quantitative tools for evaluating the performance of a digital product, with emphasis on things like conversion funnels and user journeys.

Product Architecture

The logical organization of major feature sets that informs how everything is organized, from product navigation to system architecture and may even direct how scrum teams and problem spaces are organized.

Product Backlog

The single ‘todo’ list of a Scrum team that contains new features, user stories, changes, and bug fixes. The Scrum Product Owner ‘grooms’ and prioritizes this list, uses it to feed the priorities that will be brought to the next sprint planning session.

Product Brief

A concise document that defines the product vision, attributes, and high-level requirements for a new product or major new feature. This is sometimes referred to as the ‘one pager’.

Product Council

A meeting Product leads with a cross-functional leadership group to quickly make strategic decisions and build alignment.

Product Development

The creation of a product is an on-going process with UX and engineering. Depending on process, this is either iterative (agile) or proceeds in stages (waterfall).

Product Director

A Product Director leads other Product Managers, sets the overall direction of the product, and is responsible for all major initiatives in their area of focus.

Product Design

Product Design begins with a deep understanding of the user and their needs, and goes beyond traditional UX design by delving more deeply into the ‘problem space’ for which the designs is a solution.

Product Discovery

The process of research, gathering and analysis, to determine what feature to build and why. The output of discovery is often a product brief or a set of requirements and can be done sequentially or in parallel to development.

Product Launch

A planned event by introduce a new product or major new feature. This can incorporate go-to-market planning (channels & message) as well as beta, feedback/validation and release.

Product Leadership

Refers to the role that Product should play, often more senior members of the the Product team, to guide product strategy in the right direction, and build support and alignment for the roadmap.

Product Lifecycle

Every product has a lifespan just like people. There are four recognized stages that occur sequentially: Introduction, Growth, Maturity, and Decline.

Product Management

The function of Product Management encompasses Product Managers as well as user experience design and often product analytics as well.

Product Manager

A Product Manager is a member of the Product team, that is responsible for the strategy, development, and optimization of a product for the organization.

Product Metrics

Product metrics are a level below business metrics, looking more specifically at the aspect of business metrics that can be affected by the product and its features.

Product Mission

A concice 2-3 sentence statement that explains the purpose of the product and the team working on that product. It is common to pair a mission with objectives and specific metrics.

Product Opportunity Heuristics

A framework from Neal Cabage for evaluating new product opportunity. The 5 criteria include Customers, Competitors, Capability, Finance, and Team, and form the foundation of the Product Scorecard.

Product Ops

Product Operations is a relatively new sub-function of Product Management that facilitates key activities such as user interviews, team, communications, and user support and feedback.

Product Owner

A role on a Scrum team that is responsible for the product backlog, writing requirements, and prioritization for sprint planning.

Product Portfolio Management

Similar to a stock portfolio, strategic evaluation of a set of products, how much to invest and when to either acquire or divest products in or out of the portfolio.

Product Positioning

Orientation of a product’s features and market messaging to align the product to a specific market need or desire, thus increasing demand and differentiating from competition.

Product Prioritization

Determination of which requirements or features to have a product dev team address first. There are many popular prioritization frameworks such as RICE and ICE that aid in this process.

PRD

A Product Requirements Document (PRD) articulates all the requirements of a product before it is developments. This is a traditional; method of Product Management and a key artifact of Waterfall process.

Product Requirements

Requirements outline the problem to be solved and provide guidance to the team about how to create a solution that fits. In Agile they're often written as user stories.

Product Specs

A Product spec, also know as a Product Brief, or as a “product one-pager’, this provides a high-level accounting of the product’s strategic vision, goals, and key features to be developers.

Product Squads (spotify)

Spotify developed their own optimized approach to teams and process, inspired by Scrum but optimized to provide greater team ownership, pride, and autonomy.

Product Stack

Refers to the set of tools and resources a Product Management team uses in the course of performing Product Management.

Product Team Competencies

A team management framework development by N Cabage that describes the skills of a Product Management team across 2 axis - strategic vs tactical, and outward vs inward.

Product Vision

A concise statement describing the future state of a product as a means of articulating and aligning a team on the strategic direction of the product.

Product-Market Fit

Describes how well a product fits the need or desire of the market it serves, and whether that market is under-served, or the differentiation of the product in the case of an over-served market.

Product-Market Matrix

A strategic framework from Igor Ansoff that compares market versus product opportunities (new vs old) in order to describe relative strategic postures where to focus efforts.

Product-Marketing Mix (4Ps)

The Product-Marketing mix, also know as the ‘4 P’s’ is a classic Marketing framework describing the four aspects that must be considered: Product, Price, Promotion, and Placement.

Program Manager

Whereas Product Management determines ‘what and why’ to build, a Program Manager focuses on creating and managing an efficient delivery pipeline in support of those products and features.

Project Manager

A Project Manager focuses on delivery of a specific project. It is a more tactical sub-function of Program Management and highly aligned with complex operational activities such as Marketing or IT.

R

RICE Scoring

A scoring rubric developed by Intercom to aid in prioritization of feature projects. The rubric is (Reach x Impact x Confidence) / Effort.

S

SAM

Serviceable Available Market. Relative to Total Available Market (TAM), the SAM is the portion of TAM whose needs can be addressed with your service or solution.

Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)

A framework for applying Agile and Scrum in large organizations with dozens of teams, who struggle with standard Agile and its lack of centralized orchestration.

Scrum

An Agile project management framework that emphasizes iteration but uses planning intervals to regularly check in and prioritize work to be done, typically over a 2-week timeframe.

Scrum Team

A scrum team is typically a cross-functional group of of 5-8 people who possess the skills needed to achieve an outcome they’re tasked with.

Scrumban

Some teams have combined Kanban and Scrum in an effort to realize the benefits and flexibilities of both - this the name.

Shape Up Method

A process framework developed by 37 Signals for orchestrating the shaping, betting, and building of products, built around 6-week intervals of exploration and evaluation.

SMART objectives

A framework for developing better objectives by indicating they should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Solution Space

In Product development, the problem space is where we understand customer needs, what’s needed and why. The solution space responds to that discovery and defines appropriate solutions.

SOM

Share of Market. In the TAM/SAM/SOM model, the SOM is the last sequential filter for evaluating market size and likely outcome of addressing a market need.

Squad (spotify model)

In the Spotify Agile framework, a Squad is an autonomous team that is given a chartered outcome to achieve and resources by which to achieve it.

Stakeholder

A stakeholder is someone from within the organization who has a vested interest in the outcome of a product or initiative. They often want to keep informed of progress and make contribute requirements,.

Stakeholder Requests

Stakeholders such as Marketing or Sales team may have high interest in the product and thus may contribute requests for features that will enable their functional efforts.

Standup

A short daily meeting in Scrum, where the team meets to review what they accomplished yesterday, what they’re doing today, and any blocked. The meeting is done while standing up, to ensure it stays short and concise.

Story Points

An abstracted method of estimating level of effort (LOE) for a user story, rather than using actual time. This is because it is just an estimate, not precise. Individuals speed may also vary.

Story Mapping

A framework used for release planning, that aligns stories to value streams, to ensure there is a theme and intention. to what goes into a release, not just a collection of tickets.

SWOT Analysis

A traditional 2x2 business analysis grid for evaluating a company’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

T

TAM

The Total Available Market (TAM) is the first step of TAM>SAM>SOM, a sequential filtering process by which market sizing is performed.

Tech Debt

Using financial debt as a metaphor, short cuts and unaddressed issues in the code can become a burden to new feature development over time, due to bugs and undue complexities. The debt must be ‘paid down’ over time.

Technical Product Manager

Some products are technical and require a Product manager with technical knowledge to build and understand. the market. For example, a product for engineers.

The Five Whys

A framework for user interviews in which the interviewer asks ‘why’ five times in a row, to really get to the heart of what motivates a user’s needs and behavior.

The User is Drunk

A metaphor and anchoring philosophy in UX design, that posits that even a user who is drunk should be able to understand the user interface and how it works - it shield be that usable and self-evident.

Theme

A broadstroke alignment of multiple features that are related, either in terms of how they are implemented, or in the strategic outcome they support. Themes can be a great way to organize teams.

Theme-Based Roadmap

Rather than putting features onto a timeline-based roadmap, theme-based roadmapping uses a Now/Next/Later format to intentionally leave space to discover what to build.

Three Pillars of Product

An easy-to-understand model for understanding Product Management, describing three main areas: opportunity discovery, planning, and development.

Tribe (spotify)

In Spotify’s Squads framework, a Tribe is a cross-cutting group of individuals who where a common interest and meet to discuss, share, and align.

U

Usability

A consideration of good interface design. Usability asks whether an interview is easy to understand and use, without explanation or help being necessary.

Usability Testing

Users are asked to perform a series of steps with the product and narrate their experience so that researchers can identify usability issues with the interface that need to be addressed.

Use Case

A written artifact that describes the context of when and how a system is used. This context helps to better inform how the system is designed.

User Acceptance Testing

UAT is the final step and often performed by a Product Manager, using the product “as a user” to confirm if it satisfies the acceptance criteria.

User Experience (UX)

Describes the users emotions and behaviors while using a product. It is a positive experience if the product was useful, easy to use, and understand.

User Persona

Personas originated at Microsoft in the 1980s. A team may identify 3-5 ‘personas’ that represent the different need/behavior sets they serve, to help understand the prominence and context of needs to solve for.

User Research

An aspect of user experience that encompasses qualitative understanding of a product’s users, including usability testing and attitudinal user interviews.

User Stories

A convention of Scrum for describing a unit of shippable work that can be undertaken in a sprint. A user story follows the template of: As a user, I want ‘x’ so that I can ‘y’.

V

Value Creation Plane

A product differentiation framework created by Neal Cabage that looks at the competitive landscape along 2 axes. The idea is to look for opportunities to shift your product to a different quadrant from competitors, thereby differentiating it.

Value vs Complexity

A 2x2 evaluation matrix with value along one axis and complexity on the other. This framework can help teams to prioritize initiatives and is similar to an impact vs effort, or benefit vs cost comparison.

Vanity Metrics

Metrics help us to measure the performance of a product. Vanity metrics measure the things that don’t matter or do not directly correlate to the health of the business.

Velocity

A metric for measuring the output of a Scrum team. By estimating in points (or hours) at the beginning of a sprint, and capturing what was accomplished during a sprint, you can see velocity per sprint, over time.

Vision

A concise statement describing the future state of a product as a means of articulating and aligning a team on the strategic direction of the product.

Voice of the Customer (VoC)

Product Managers and User Experience designers are some of the advocates of a customer within an organization. Whereas business seeks to capture value, it is important to also advocate for the customer and be their voice to find a healthy balance.

Work In Progress (WIP)

In Project Management, work in progress refers to the units of work that are currently in flight.