These are some terms that we will usually use while working in a product team. Understanding these terms correctly will make it easier for you to read/view the material as well as communicate with the team.

You can find many many of them on the internet but just like English, 20% of the words makes up for 80% of the conversation. So I’ll keep this list short yet valuable.

Please note that this is not an article about anything. It’s a list of terms so I cannot go through each of them in detail.

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Acceptance criteria (AC)

It is specified by the product owner from a business or stakeholder perspective, used to determine whether a product backlog item has been successfully developed. You may ask, what is the difference between AC and Definition of Done (DoD). In short, AC is feature-specific, while DoD is applicable to all features of a product.

Agile

A movement for finding better ways of developing software. Scrum and Extreme Programming are two leading examples. Others, such as Kanban or Lean Startup do not define themselves in the Agile tradition but are based on compatible values and principles

API

An application programming interface is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other.

Backlog
A backlog is an ordered list of items representing everything that may be needed to deliver a specific outcome. There are different types of backlogs depending on the type of item they contain and the approach being used (such as Product backlog, Sprint backlog)

Behavior Driven Development (BDD)

BDD is a practice where members of the team discuss the expected behavior of a system in order to build a shared understanding of expected functionality.

BI (Business Intelligence)

A team for managing, analyzing, and interpreting data to make informed decisions. This data typically includes a range of sources like industry reports, customer feedback, usage data, and competitor research.

Burndown Chart

A chart which shows the amount of work remained. Time is shown on the horizontal axis and work remaining on the vertical axis. As time progresses and items are drawn from the backlog and completed, a plot line showing work remaining may be expected to fall. The amount of work may be assessed in any of several ways such as user story points or task hours.

Burnup Chart

A chart which shows the amount of work which has been completed. Time is shown on the horizontal axis and work completed on the vertical axis. As time progresses and items are drawn from the backlog and completed, a plot line showing the work done may be expected to rise. The amount of work may be assessed in any of several ways such as user story points or task hours. The amount of work considered to be in-scope may also be plotted as a line; the burn-up can be expected to approach this line as work is completed.

Bugs (Defects)

Bugs are unintended or unexpected behavior in software and can occur in any stage of your product lifecycle, including after its release! Testing, users, or quality assurance engineers can discover bugs, and while some can be fixed immediately, others may take a bit of time.

Churn

This is the number or percentage of customers who cancel their subscriptions, do not use, or choose not to renew with your product. This can ultimately hurt your recurring revenue so it’s best to look for the root of the problem!

Clean Code

An attribute of source code that is expressed well, formatted correctly and organized for later coders to understand. Clarity is preferred over cleverness.

Competitor Analysis

Assessing the strengths and weaknesses of similar products from direct or indirect competitors. Keep this analysis in mind when defining your unique value provisions!

Conversion Rate

This is the percentage of visitors to your site, prospects, or clicks who then become paying customers to your service. Think of this as the number of customers who buy something divided by the number of total customers who enter a store.

Customer Experience (CX)

This refers to every interaction a customer has with your business and how they’ve made that customer feel about your company in general. This includes any encounter with the product, the customer success processes, marketing, sales, and advertising.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV or CLTV)

This is the estimated total revenue a customer creates for a business in the entirety of their relationship. This is how businesses determine the cost-efficiency of adding and supporting customers over time.

Customer Retention Rate (CRR)

While churn refers to the measurement of customers who do not renew, customer retention is the measurement of how many customers do renew their contracts or subscriptions. The best way to maintain a healthy customer retention rate is to establish a trusted and engaged relationship between your business and the customers to keep them engaged and satisfied!

Daily Scrum

Daily event of 15 minutes, or less, for the Developers to re-plan the next day of development work during a Sprint. Updates are reflected in the Sprint Backlog.

Daily Active Users (DAU)

Staying on top of your number of daily active users is a common way of measuring engagement to determine the retention of your customers. The definition of an “active user” is determined by the function and usage your product serves, and while high engagement might seem like the goal, it can also be an indicator of bottlenecks in your workflow.

Other common engagement metrics include Weekly Active Users (WAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU).

Definition of Done (DoD)

The definition of done is an agreed upon list of the activities deemed necessary to get a product increment, usually represented by a user story, to a done state by the end of a sprint.

Designers

Designers create the look, feel, and function of a product. They are in charge of planning how the product and its features will be presented while improving user experience and reducing points of friction in future variations. There are a few types of designer: Product Designers, User Experience Designers, Customer Experience Designers, Interaction Designers.

Design Thinking

This is a human-first design process that requires you to understand the problems and needs of the audience you’re designing for. The idea is that by empathizing with the people your product serves, you can better anticipate problems and innovate your product because you are so in-tune with what your customer wants.

Developers (Engineers)

Accountability in Scrum Team. These members of the Scrum Team are accountable for managing, organizing and doing all development work required to create a releasable Increment of product every Sprint.

DevOps

An organizational concept bridging the gap between development and operations, in terms of skills, mind-set, practices, and silo mentality. The underlying idea is that developers are aware of—and in daily work consider implications on—operations, and vice versa.

Empiricism

Process control type in which only the past is accepted as certain and in which decisions are based on observation, experience and experimentation.

Epic

An epic is a large user story that might require sprints to complete.

Estimation

In software development, an “estimate” is the evaluation of the effort necessary to carry out a given development task; this is most often expressed in terms of duration.

Exploratory Testing

Exploratory testing is, more than strictly speaking a “practice,” a style or approach to testing software which is often contrasted to “scripted testing.”

Extreme Programming

Extreme Programming (XP) is an agile software development framework that aims to produce higher quality software, and higher quality of life for Developers. XP is the most specific of the agile frameworks regarding appropriate engineering practices for software development.

Go-To-Market Strategy

This is your strategic and tactical plan of how a company intends to manage a successful product release. This plan includes pricing, sales strategies, a customer journey map, marketing, budget, customer support, and more.

Impediment

Any hindrance or obstacle that is blocking or slowing down the Developers and cannot be solved through the self-managing of Developers themselves. Raised no later than at the Daily Scrum, the Scrum Master is accountable for its removal.

Increment

A piece of working software that adds to previously created Increments, where the sum of all Increments -as a whole – form a product.

Integration

When an application can integrate with another, it means that the two software can synchronize with the other’s data and workflow. You might hear API while integrating with other products.

Iteration

An iteration is a timebox during which development takes place. The  duration may vary from project to project and is usually fixed.

Jobs-To-Be-Done

This refers to the job or task that a customer is trying to complete in order to better understand the problems they face and their motivations for seeking out a solution. There is a book with the same name that I shared on this site.

Kanban

The Kanban Method is a means to design, manage and improve flow for knowledge work and allows teams to start where they are to drive evolutionary change.

Kanban Board

A Kanban Board is a visual workflow tool consisting of multiple columns. Each column represents a different stage in the workflow process.

Kano Model

Prioritizing product features by how likely they are to satisfy your customer. By comparing the probability of satisfaction against the cost to develop it, your product team can determine if it’s strategic to add it to the roadmap.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

A Minimum Viable Product is the “version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.” For example, if you want to build a a messaging platform, your MVP might allow user to send text message only. The other feature (sending photo, video) might not be included in the MVP

Mockup

Mockups are realistic drawings or physical models of your product but do not have the functionality. They are a visual representation or depiction of what the team imagines for the product.

Pair Programming

Pair programming consists of two programmers sharing a single workstation (one screen, keyboard and mouse among the pair).

Personas

User personas are a representation of your app or website’s user base segments. They act as a benchmark for design and teams to work with to create the optimal user experience. It is a fictitious profile based on the type of people who would be the main users of your app.

Planning Poker

An approach to estimation used by Agile teams. Each team member “plays” a card bearing a numerical value corresponding to a point estimation for a user story.

Product Backlog

An ordered list of the work to be done in order to create, maintain and sustain a product. Managed by the Product Owner.

Product Backlog refinement

An on-going activity in a sprint through which the Product Owner and Developers add tickets to the Product Backlog.

Product Goal

The Product Goal describes a future state of the product which can serve as a target for the Scrum Team to plan against. The Product Goal is in the Product Backlog. The rest of the Product Backlog emerges to define “what” will fulfill the Product Goal.

Product Owner

The Product Owner is a role for maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Scrum Team. How this is done may vary widely across organizations, Scrum Teams, and individuals.

Product Roadmap

A description of the incremental nature of how a product will be built and delivered over time, along with the important factors that drive each individual release. Useful when developing a product that will have more than one release.

Product Vision

A brief statement of the desired future state that would be achieved by developing and deploying a product. A good vision should be simple to state and provide a coherent direction to the people who are asked to realize it.

Prototype

While a mockup is a drawing or physical representation of what a product will look like, a prototype is an early model that is developed enough for customers to test its functionality.

Quality Assurance (QA) / Quality Control (QC)

This is a company’s process for ensuring and improving the quality of its products in all stages of a product’s development. There is a dedicated role for this in the Scrum team.

Scrum

A framework to support teams in complex product development. Scrum consists of Scrum Teams and their associated roles, events, artifacts, and rules, as defined in the Scrum GuideTM.

Scrum Master

A role in Scrum Team. This member of the Scrum Team is accountable for guiding, coaching, teaching and assisting a Scrum Team and its environments in a proper understanding and use of Scrum.

Sprint

Time-boxed event of 30 days or less (usually 2 weeks), that serves as a container for the other Scrum events and activities. Sprints are done consecutively, without intermediate gaps.

Sprint Backlog

An overview of the development work to realize a Sprint’s goal, typically a forecast of functionality and the work needed to deliver that functionality. Managed by Developers.

Sprint Goal

A short expression of the purpose of a Sprint, often a business problem that is addressed. Functionality might be adjusted during the Sprint in order to achieve the Sprint Goal.

Sprint Planning

Time-boxed event of 8 hours, or less (depending on the sprint length), to start a Sprint. It serves for the Scrum Team to inspect the work from the Product Backlog that’s most valuable to be done next and design that work into Sprint backlog.

Sprint Retrospective

Time-boxed event of 3 hours, or less (depending on the sprint length), to end a Sprint. It serves for the Scrum Team to inspect the past Sprint and plan for improvements to be enacted during the next Sprint.

Sprint Review

Time-boxed event of 4 hours, or less (depending on the sprint length), to conclude the development work of a Sprint. It serves for the Scrum Team and the stakeholders to inspect the Increment of product resulting from the Sprint, assess the impact of the work performed on overall progress and update the Product backlog in order to maximize the value of the next period.

Stakeholders

External people (in other departments out of the company) who have a specific interest in and knowledge of a product that is required for incremental discovery. Represented by the Product Owner and actively engaged with the Scrum Team at Sprint Review.

Scrum of Scrums

A technique to scale Scrum up to large groups (over a dozen people), consisting of dividing the groups into Agile teams of 5-10.

Story Mapping

Story mapping consists of ordering user stories along two independent dimensions. The “map” arranges user activities along the horizontal axis roughly in the order in which the user would perform the task. Down the vertical axis, user stories are ordered by priority and/or increasing sophistication of the implementation.

Story Points

A story point is a unit assigned to a user story to express how much time and energy would be required for that job. So a higher number would indicate a more difficult task that would require more time. This is a relative estimation technique which means the numbers are assigned to each task by comparison to other similar tasks.

Test Driven Development (TDD)

“Test-driven development” is a style of programming in which three activities are tightly interwoven: coding, testing (in the form of writing unit tests) and design (in the form of refactoring).  

Technical debt

A term used to describe the obligation that a software organization incurs when it chooses a design or construction approach that is expedient in the short term but that increases complexity and is more costly in the long term. 2. A metaphor that facilitates the communication between business and technical people regarding implementation artifact inadequacies.

Theme

The product theme is a very high-level plan for your product. This can typically be summarized by your product goal or as the answer to the question “what problem does this product solve?”

Timebox

A timebox is a previously agreed period of time during which a person or a team works steadily towards completion of some goal.

Usability Testing

Usability testing is an empirical, exploratory technique to answer questions such as “how would an end user respond to our software under realistic conditions?”

Use case (UC)

This is a simple and very likely scenario explaining how a customer would use your product to solve a problem. Though these are hypothetical examples, they are common enough to where they are believable or relatable, and help prove the need and value of different parts of your product.

User Stories

In consultation with the customer or product owner, the team divides up the work to be done into functional increments called “user stories.”

Velocity

An optional, but often used, indication of the average amount of Product Backlog turned into an Increment of product during a Sprint by a Scrum Team, tracked by the Developers for use within the Scrum Team.

Wireframe

Somewhat similar to a mockup or a prototype, a wireframe is a basic representation of your product—except it only communicates its function. This is often a very basic-looking web page that only aims to arrange features and show how users will actually use your product.

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