Acceptance criteria are a set of targets that must be met in order to successfully finalize and complete the user story.
The Agile Values are the four core values of the Agile Manifesto, a guide designed to help software development teams work more efficiently and collaboratively.
There are 12 agile principles included in The Agile Manifesto, originated by software developers to prioritize individual interactions, customer collaboration, and flexibility.
Agile Frameworks are the different variations and approaches used by development teams based on the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto.
The Agile Manifesto is a document setting out the key values and principles behind the Agile philosophy, helping software developers work more efficiently and effectively.
The Agile methodology is a set of values and principles, promoting iterative ways of working, where teams progress in “sprints”. This enables more effective prioritization and, if done well, also increases user satisfaction.
An acceptance test is conducted by the customer or the end-user to evaluate if a software solution meets requirements.
An alpha test is a form of acceptance testing used to identify all possible issues and defects of a software system before it is released to actual end-users.
Adaptive software development embodies the principle that continuous adaptation of the process to the work at hand is the normal way to work.
With agile transformation, an organization restructures and redefines itself to align with the agile methodology, affecting the business as a whole.
An A/B test is an essential comparative process used to identify which version of two items is most effective, such as PPC ads, landing pages, and more.
Business agility takes the principles of agile development and uses them across an entire organization, increasing adaptability to market changes, challenge or opportunities. An agile business also fosters greater creativity, innovation, and collaboration.
A burndown chart is a visual representation of the amount of work that has been completed and outstanding work in a sprint.
Backlog grooming gives product teams the opportunity to review and prioritize their outstanding user stories, typically in preparation for the next sprint.
Business transformation is the process of redesigning, restructuring, or expanding a business to adapt to relevant internal or external changes.
Business Intelligence refers to the uncovering, interpreting and application of relevant data and information to help businesses make better decisions.
A backlog is a prioritized list of all smaller tasks to be completed for a larger development project. It usually includes user stories, bug fixes, and product updates.
A buyer persona is a functional tool that helps businesses maximize their customer experiences by creating products based on a concrete understanding of the people buying (but not necessarily using) them.
A bill of materials is an exhaustive list of the components, parts, and raw materials required for manufacturing a product.
Continuous deployment is an agile production method, designed to fast-track products to market.
Crystal is an agile methodology for software development. It focuses on people and communications over processes and tools and is uniquely flexible around team types, criticality and project priority.
Continuous integration is an engineering process where code is subjected to automated testing, several times a day, to identify bugs or errors.
A customer advisory board is a group of customers brought together by a business to provide expert advice and share insights about its products and services.
Customer empathy is the ability to see the world through your user’s eyes. This understanding helps you see where your product fits into their lifestyle, and where it can really add value.
A cross-functional team unites people with diverse skills from across a company, specializing in different functional areas such as design or product management.
Continuous Delivery (CD) is defined as the ability to deliver product updates to customers as quickly and frequently as possible.
Channels of distribution (or a distribution channel) are channels of businesses or intermediaries which a product or service travels through before reaching the final customer.
Conversion rate refers to the percentage of website visitors that complete a specific action.
Competitive analysis is the process of identifying competitors and evaluating their strategies in order to determine their weaknesses and strengths.
Product cannibalization is when a company has several products that compete with one another within the same market.
A customer journey map outlines each step, across all touchpoints, that a user takes to interact with or buy from your product, service or brand. Customer journey maps can increase empathy with users and reveal areas for added value.
Churn is the percentage of customers that stop using your business during a given time frame.
Cost of sales (also known as cost of goods sold) refers to the cost required to manufacture or purchase a product that is then sold to a customer.
Dynamic Systems Development Method an agile iterative approach to software development that considers not just the lifecycle of a project, but also the wider business impact it will have.
Dual-track agile is a form of agile development, in which the work of a product development team is separated across a discovery track and delivery track.
In reference to the Scrum agile framework, the definition of done (DoD) describes predefined demands a certain output must meet when being delivered. It is used to establish a common understanding on the product’s level of integrity to ensure quality.
In the Scrum agile framework, the definition of ready (DoR) marks the completeness of preliminary actions for a task or project to be processed.
Digital transformation refers to the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business to redesign processes and products for the digital age.
Design Thinking is a user-centric approach to innovation and problem solving. Focused on empathizing with users, Design Thinking is concerned with developing meaningful products that keep users’ genuine wants and needs at heart.
Design ops applies to the process of organizing and optimizing a design team’s workflow, structure, and processes to maximize its value to a company as a whole.
A DEEP backlog is one possible outcome of a backlog grooming session. The acronym that describes effective backlogs, and stands for: Detailed Appropriately, Emergent, Estimates and Prioritized.
Disciplined Agile (DA) is a process decision toolkit, bringing together elements from Scrum, eXtreme Programming, Kanban and, of course, agile development. As such, DA helps teams streamline their internal processes and achieve greater business agility.
A dependency describes the relationship among activities and specifies the particular order in which they need to be performed.
An epic refers to a grouping of user stories (or development tasks) which together make it possible to achieve a product theme. The theme > epic > story structure is a popular method in agile development.
eXtreme Programming (XP) is a set of strictly defined engineering practices, that aim to not only promote the principles of agile development but also to improve the quality of life for the development team.
An engineering backlog shows which work items are being completed by the engineering team in the current sprint.
Enterprise Architecture Planning (EAP) is a process by which organizations define how IT and information will be used in a business to achieve its goals.
An enterprise architecture roadmap is a high-level overview of the direction a company's IT plans and projects will take over time.
Feature Driven Development (FDD) is an iterative agile model used to incrementally develop features into a complete product. It focuses on building software by breaking it into small components, rapidly developed in repetitive cycles.
Feature bloat relates to products carrying excessive features, perhaps becoming overloaded to a point that core functions are impaired.
A FAB analysis describes the features, advantages and benefits of a product, and how they work together to help differentiate a product within the market.
Features are the defining attributes of a product that make it valuable to customers and distinguish it from the rest of the market.
An iteration is the specific time period set aside for the development of a product or software.
A Kanban board is a visualization tool allowing teams to optimize their workflow, completing tasks with increased productivity and efficiency.
Lean Software Development is an agile framework, intended to optimize development time, use of resources, and focus on the minimum viable needs of a product.
Market validation is the process of verifying a product of concept with a target market, usually via interviews.
Launching with a minimum viable product (MVP) allows teams to test a product’s core concept and functionality in a realistic setting, receiving user feedback and improving iteratively when needed.
A marketing plan is a document that defines a marketing strategy for a company in order to reach their targeted audience.
A mission statement is a clear definition of a business, its goals, its ethos, its reasons for being and its primary customers.
Net Promoter Score is a metric that gauges customer loyalty and satisfaction simply by asking customers how likely they are to recommend your product or service on a simple scale.
A product requirements document (PRD) is a detailed outline of all functionalities a software product must fulfill when being delivered.
Product roadmaps the vision and strategic objectives for a product over time. They give development teams and stakeholders a ‘single source of truth’ that captures all the steps needed to deliver against objectives.
A project roadmap is a visual overview capturing all critical elements of a project, from kickoff to final delivery.
Product differentiation is how a business distinguishes a service or product from others that are available in the same category.
The product lifecycle is the journey each product takes from the inception of an idea all the way through to a product’s retirement.
Product-market fit refers to the way in which a brand’s product is capable of satisfying the current market, by supplying enough units of a high-enough quality to meet demand.
A product designer (sometimes known as an experience designer, user interface designer, interaction designer, information architect, etc.) takes responsibility for a product’s overall user experience.
A product backlog is a list of all the tasks known to be needed in the product. It serves as an authoritative source for what the team should be working on right now.
Pair programming involves two programmers sharing a single workstation. One programmer focuses on coding, whilst the other reviews and assesses the work.
Product excellence refers to a framework for developing a product or feature based on a deep understanding of user needs. Product excellence enables businesses to innovate more efficiently, enabling them to get the right products to market quickly.
A product strategy is your business’s goal(s) for a product and the in-depth process for achieving success
Product enablement increases awareness and understanding of a business’s product(s) across the entire organization, with the aim of making each and every employee higher performing.
A project manager is responsible for the execution of a project from start to finish. A project manager is often the bridge between the team, deliverables and upper management.
A product manager is responsible for the success of a product. The product manager has profound knowledge on the developed product and everything that goes with it.
The product owner (PO) represents next to the ScrumMaster and the development team a key player in a Scrum team.
Product requirements management refers to the process of collecting, analyzing, tracking, and prioritizing product requirements. These requirements are usually communicated later on to key stakeholders.
A program manager’s essential objective is to reconcile multiple projects and teams by coordinating them and giving strategic guidance to the company’s project managers.
Product ops, referring to product operations, supports a cross-functional product team to constantly ensure and improve their efficiency.
A release demo shows the work, and the progress of a project, at the end of each iteration.
Rapid Application Development (RAD) is an adaptive software development approach where a software prototype is rapidly updated based on user feedback and iteratively delivered until it meets all client requirements.
Rapid prototyping is a key part of product development, leveraging functional prototypes for in-depth testing of core design elements (size, function, etc.) and overall user experience.
A roadmap is a high-level strategic overview of a significant business initiative. Roadmaps are typically used to manage the development of a new product or the execution of a company-wide project.
Experiments are launched rapidly to discover new ideas. This allows product development teams to build less and learn more.
A retrospective is a team meeting held after a product has shipped. Its primary goal is to discuss what happened during the product development cycle, providing valuable lessons for the future.
A sprint is a fixed length of time allocated to a team to complete specific tasks and achieve goals.
A Story Point is a unit of measure used in the agile development process to express an estimate of the overall effort that will be required to fully implement a product backlog item.
An agile framework designed to help scale agile practices for larger organizations with multiple teams working on multifaceted projects.
The sprint goal is a clear, simple objective to be completed during a single sprint or iteration.
In a sprint planning meeting, the Scrum team will prioritize which items from the product backlog should be delivered during the current sprint.
A sprint backlog is the list of items selected from the product backlog to deliver during the current sprint. Crucially, this should also contain a solid plan for delivering the product increments to meet the sprint goals.
Story mapping is the visualization of a user’s journey with your product, breaking each step down into user stories. This exercise can help you see clearly which features and functionalities are essential for your MVP.
Scope creep describes the tendency for projects to gradually expand, and take on a different scope of activity or output than was initially planned.
A standup is a short daily meeting designed to share progress amongst the team and encourage good communication.
Being a Scrum Master is a professional occupation and originates from a designated role in the Scrum framework. A Scrum Master is responsible for delegating and supervising agile software development activities based on the ideas and methods of Scrum.
The Scrum meeting is executed daily, usually performed as a stand-up meeting. Participants include all Scrum team members, such as product owner, Scrum Master and development team.
Total addressable market refers to the maximum possible revenue a product or service could generate if it was able to activate every single relevant customer.
A theme in product management is a simple way to convey a product’s value, comprising multiple features or initiatives which contribute to this overall objective.
User Experience (UX) refers to the total, end-to-end experience of using a product or service. UX Designers use first-hand research to analyze every touchpoint and interaction, seeking to reduce friction and improve user satisfaction.
Whilst the role of a UX Designer may vary from business to business, you can think of them as an advocate users — it is the UX Designer’s job to ensure the best possible user experience, in everything from purchase to packaging.
A unique selling point (USP) is the key reason a customer should choose your brand, product or service — it’s what separates you from your competition.
A user story is a well-formed, short and simple description of a software requirement from the perspective of an end-user.
A user persona is a semi-fictional character created to represent different customer types that use a company’s products or services.
User research includes qualitative and quantitative means of gathering user feedback on your product or service, to guarantee what you build is not only user-centric but has the best chance of commercial success.
Velocity is a measure of the speed at which an agile team completes work items. By analyzing Velocity, teams can estimate how much work they can complete in future iterations.
A wireframe is a simple representation of a web page or application’s layout, serving as a visual prototype to illustrate the product’s various UI elements.
Waterfall software development breaks work into consecutive stages, that each happens one after the other until the completion of the project.
Website metrics are a variety of measurements made on a given website in order to better track its performance and statistics.
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