This is a community-contributed glossary of common product terms, and how they’re defined.
Credit to @Chonita
Used to compare the performance of two items or variations against one another. In product management, A/B tests are often used to identify the best-performing option. With A/B testing (also called split testing or A/B split testing), teams can create true apples-to-apples comparisons of two versions of a feature, to understand how users respond to the different versions and to ensure the strongest performing version is selected to improve the performance of the product.
The predefined requirements that must be met to consider a user story complete. Acceptance criteria are a form of agile requirements documentation and are also sometimes called the “definition of done” because they determine the scope and requirements of user stories. When all the criteria are met, the team can set the task aside and move on to the next story.
Visual tool that helps a team review large amounts of information by grouping items into categories based on their relationship to each other. Instead of analyzing each idea on a long list without context, the team can spot trends and patterns. Seeing those patterns can help teams make better decisions.
A philosophy for an iterative and collaborative approach to product development. Self-organizing teams work collaboratively in brief, incremental “sprints,” and regroup frequently to review the work and make changes. This adds frequent feedback and the ability to switch focus and priority quickly. This is in contrast to the more traditional, sequence-based, Waterfall methodology, where teams work from long-term plans in discrete phases for development teams to execute. Agile, with its iterative approach and frequent opportunities for feedback can provide more flexibility, greater transparency, reduce the risk of project failure, and result in products that provide greater value to users.
Represent key information during the development of a product. They provide detail and documentation about the product being developed, actions to produce it, and the actions performed during the project. Major artifacts include the product backlog, sprint backlog, and increments. Artifacts are designed to maximize transparency of key information and are living documents that evolve to reflect changes in the project.
A group method of creative problem-solving frequently used in product concept generation and problem solving. The goal is to generate as many ideas as possible related to a particular topic before performing any critical evaluation.
A group of people with a variety of expertise who come together to achieve a common goal. Cross-functional teams often have representation from various “functional” departments. For example, an agile cross-functional team may consist of a product manager, research, design, content, and developers. The purpose is to break down silos and develop products faster and more efficiently.
Information for both internal use and product users that describes what the product does, how it works, and other essential details. Some common product documentation includes the Product Roadmap, Style Guides, Glossaries, Wireframes, Product Requirements Documents (PRD), and Product and Sprint Backlogs