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PRODUCT LESSONS TO INSPIRE AND
SHARPEN YOUR PRODUCT MANAGEMENT SKILLS

STORIES

Get ready to expand your product management know-how and become a true product management ninja, with these razor-sharp resources!

Having braved the battlefield of product management, I’ve ninja-chopped my lessons into bite-sized brainteasers and juicy nuggets of information for you to sharpen your skills.

These stories straight from the trenches will have you learning without even realizing it.

If you prefer visual training, I’ve got more reels than you can shake a stick at, all to the point and guaranteed to keep you engaged.

And don’t worry if you feel lost in the world of product management terminology – I’ve got your back with an extensive, all-inclusive (at least I think it is) glossary.

Let the learning begin!

Read fun, inspiring and thought-provoking,
product management stories.

Short visual information nuggets,
because visual learning is the best.

Find everything you need to know about Product Management
in an alphabetical list with explanations.

A _

An experiment that allows you to compare two versions of something to learn which is more effective, also known as split tests.

A set of predefined requirements that must be met to validate a user story or feature achieves the desired outcome.

An iterative approach that provides greater flexibility to deliver customer value  faster and with fewer headaches.

A pre-planned release cycle which has been carefully planned into phases where several Agile teams work towards a common goal

An in-house test of a new or modified piece of  software to identify issues and bugs, before releasing the product to the end users.

The average annual revenue generated from each customer contract, excluding fees.

ARR = (Overall Subscription Cost Per Year + Recurring Revenue From Add-ons or Upgrades) – Revenue Lost from Cancellations.

Organizing ideas and date into groups or themes based on their relationships

B _

A prioritized list of deliverables that a team may deliver in order to achieve a specific outcome

A regular session where backlog items are discussed, reviewed, and prioritized, by the Product Development Teams, to keep the backlog up to date and getting backlog items ready for upcoming sprints. It is also known as backlog refinement

Internal documents, with short & sweet, actionable summaries comparing your product, service, features, the market, customers, and pricing to one or many key competitors

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An outline of how a company plans to create and deliver value with its product and customer base in a specific market

A strategic management tool to quickly develop a new or document an existing business model

An approach to prioritizing a product’s development in which the product team works directly with stakeholders to learn which features they value most, by using artificial money to demonstrate trade-off decisions

C _

Something that prompts to perform an action

the methods, process and tools used for managing the people side of change to achieve a desired outcome

a corporate title referring to a strategic leader, visionary and an advocate of an organization’s product who leads the entire product organization

The rate at which customers stop doing business with a company

an automated release processes that allows to deploy change, whenever the team decides it’s time to do so

An automated release process where change that passes all stages of the product pipeline is automatically released

Part of an automated release process where changes are continuously merged and validated through automated tests

an ongoing effort to further products, services, or processes, through incremental and breakthrough improvements

A group of people from different functional areas collaborating toward a common objective, often also referred to as a multi- or inter-disciplinary team

The investments done related to acquiring a new customer

Outcomes and benefits customers wants or is expecting to have

A visual storyline of every engagement a customer has with the service or product.

Bad outcomes and/or risks the customer wants to avoid.

Part of the Value Proposition Canvas, visualizing the jobs-to-be-done, pains and gains, of a customer

D _

An agile ceremony, meant to make the team aware of the progress, covering, done, doing, anything blocking from doing

An agreed-upon set of conditions and criteria that must be completed before a feature or solution can be considered complete

something that is relying on or being controlled by someone or something else

An iterative process for solving problems by understanding the user’s needs, challenge assumptions, and redefine problems to identify  solutions that might not be instantly apparent

A set of practices that form a collaborative approach to the tasks performed by software development and IT operations  teams.

E _

A large body of work that can be broken down into smaller tasks, based on customer needs.

A group of interconnected resources that can function individuallly as well as a unit

Tool to map the context in which one designs and manages value proposition and business model

The study of people in everyday life

A way to validate or invalidate a hypothesis that produces evidence, with the objective to reduce risk and uncertainty of an idea

F _

A chunk of functionality that delivers business value and fulfils the customer’s need

A business focused on the quantity of features delivered rather than solving real problems for customers

Level of detail and functionality of a prototype

A particular set of rules, ideas, or beliefs that provide structure in order to deal with challenges, or to decide which direction take

G _

A visual representation, of activities against time, using a series of horizontal bars.

A product made widely accessible, for sale, to the customer

An action plan that details how a company will engage with target customers to convince them to buy their product and achieve competitive advantage

H _

A standardized visual tool to help teams collaborate on and visualize all the necessary items to complete a specific goal in a repetitive business

The minimum acceptable rate of return expected to receive on investement, by an investor.

An environment characterized by extreme competition, in which one must try even harder to advance their product and nulify the advantages of their competitors.

A belief that hasn’t been validated yet

I _

I _

The activity of forming ideas or concepts.

The paths through which targeted outcomes is achieved.

A design that easy to understand and use, regardless of the users’ experience, knowledge or language skills.

A way of breaking down the development of a large size of work into smaller chunks and multiple releases.

J _

A Lean manufacturing principle that ensures that quality is automatically built into a production process, by detecting and making known issues immediately when they happen.

A statement that describes, with clarity, what a persona is trying to achieve or accomplish in a given situation

K _

A Japenese business philosophy to involve all employees to continuously improve all functions.

A scheduling system for lean manufacturing, using visual cues to prompt the action needed to keep a process flowing.

An method to prioritize features based on the degree to which they are likely to satisfy customer needs.

A quantifiable measure used to evaluate the success over time for a specific goal.

L _

A development method focussing on reducing waste, accelerating delivery and increasing customer value and profit.

The total value a customer will generate over the whole period of their relationship as a customer.

The length of time from introduction to customers until removal from the market.

M _

A document outlining the needs of customers which serves as basis for creating a plan to meet those needs.

The process of determining whether or not there is a need for a product in the targeted market

The version of a new product that allows to gather the greatest amount of target customer insights, to validate the market and product, with the least amount of effort.

The version of a new product that customers love from the start.

A static design or model of a product, used for instructional or experimental purposes.

N _

A market research metric used to measure customer experience and forecast business growth.

O _

A goal-setting framework used to define challenging and ambitious goals with measurable results, and track their outcomes.

A prioritization method based on customer-assigned importance and satisfaction scores.

P _

An fictitious customer whose goals and characteristics represent the needs of a larger group of customers.

A consensus based planning technique used in agile estimating.

The process of deciding the relative importance or urgency of things.

An organisational function dealing with identifying the customer need, defining the objectives to realize, articulating what success looks like and rallying the team to turn it into reality.

An organisational function dealing with managing the backlog, so that the desired outcome that a product development team seeks to accomplish can be achieved.

A document that describes the requirements of a product, including its purpose, features, functionality and behavior

The level to which a product satisfies the market demand.

A strategic excercise to define the products’ position in the mind of customers.

An early sample, model, or release used to test or validate ideas.

Q _

The process of determining whether a product or service meets specified requirements.

R _

A high-level visual summary outlining the vision and direction of a product over time.

The activity of improving the internal structure without changing its external behavior.

The document produced and distributed alongside the launch describing the changes from the last release.

A meeting held to look back at events that took place and create a plan for improvement to be enacted upon moving forward.

S _

A set of principles, processes, and best practices for implementing agile at an enterprise scale.

A framework of processes, roles, events, artifacts and best practices, used to implement Agile delivery.

The role within a Scrum team responsible for ensuring the team applies the processes and practices agreed to and lives agile values and principles.

A short, time-boxed period in which a development team works to complete a specific set of work. Also referred to as an iteration.

A party that has an interest in the delivery and can either affect or be affected by its outcome.

A short meeting that serves to be a feedback loop to go over important tasks that have been finished, are in progress, or are about to be started.

A relative unit of measure for indicating the effort required to implement a specific piece of work.

A plan of action describing how to achieve a long-term objective.

T _

The implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing a shortcut now instead of using a more sustainable and quality approach that would take more time to implement.

The main subject around which objectives and features are planned.

A set period of time in which an activity is to be completed

U _

A to the point statement that tells customers why to buy the product and why not from the competition.

What it is that makes the product better than competitors.

Evaluating a product by observing representative customers’ behavoir and reactions, as they use it.

A written description of how someone who uses the product will accomplish a goal.

All aspects of how a customer experiences and interacts with the product.

A written description of who the user is, what they want and why.

V _

Left side of the Value Proposition Canvas which shows the products and services creating value, the pains they solve and gains they create

Tool used to design, test, build and manage products, and services

A key agile metric that measures the units of work that can be completed in a given timeframe.

A research method used to collect customers’ expectations, preferences and aversions.

A description of the desired future position of a company or product.

W _

An delivery approach that emphasizes sequential phases from beginning to end of a project, where each phase only starts when the previous has been completed.

A prioritization technique that looks at doing most valuable items first, where relative value is equal to the pure value divided by the size of the job.

A user interface consisting of simple block diagrams that show the placement of elements and demonstrate the intended functionalities and behaviors available.

Description of the (partially) unfinished items awaiting completion.

X _

An Agile software development framework, specifically designed for improving the quality of the software and the work process for the development team.

Y _

Z _

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