6 product management terms product teams want you to know

No matter your role, if you’re focused on creating great customer experiences, chances are you’re working with multiple teams across your organization. Each team has a unique role to play in creating great CX, and likely use phrases, acronyms, and terms that not everyone will know or understand. To help with the translations, we reached out to our friends on social media and our internal experts at UserTesting to find out what key terms these teams want their colleagues to know:

• Product
• Design
• Marketing
• Research
• Executive

We’re kicking things off with the Product teams edition, the first in a five-part series that will help you better communicate across teams. Use this guide to get aligned with the teams you work with—and get everyone speaking the most important language of all; the customers’.

Top six product management terms you should know

GA

GA, or general availability, is when a product is released and is available to the general public. This differs from limited or beta releases in which the product is only made available to a select audience for testing and feedback.

Lean development

Lean product development is often misunderstood. As the name implies, lean processes are focused on doing more with less—but it’s not for lack of resources. Lean development is intended to maximize efficiencies, thus eliminating any steps that don’t add value to the project. The goal with lean development is to test products with customers early and often in the development cycle, ultimately getting the MVP into the hands of customers faster.

MVP

MVP, or minimum viable product, is the earliest version of a product that a company feels is ready to be introduced to—and will add value for—customers, especially early-adopters. Product teams use MVPs to get a product out into the real world and gather insight and feedback to help further iterate and improve their product.    Many product teams note that the term is often misunderstood by their non-product colleagues, with some using alternate teams like initial offering to underscore that future iterations and improvements are inevitable and expected.

Prioritization

Deciding what products or features to work on, and when, is one of the most important aspects of product management. The term itself is pretty self-explanatory but it can become a bit challenging when other teams are weighing in on what should or shouldn’t be prioritized. When other teams review customer feedback on an MVP, for example, they might pick out one person’s passionate feedback about a particular feature, and decide that addressing that should be a priority. Prioritizing, however, involves much more than oiling the squeakiest wheels. Product teams need to consider what will make the greatest impact in the shortest amount of time—and that it’s feasible to accomplish.

Value proposition

A value proposition, or value prop, is a way for teams to help ensure that the products they build provide value to customers. At its core, it’s a statement that clearly outlines what problem the product will solve—or the value it will deliver—for customers. Establishing a value proposition helps keep teams aligned throughout the development process and will help inform better decision making, ultimately leading to a better product.

USP

USP, or unique selling proposition, is something everyone within an organization should understand about the product(s) they offer. Although it may sound like more of a sales term, product teams rely on this to help identify key differentiators in a product, helping them prioritize the right feature developments and products to meet customer and market needs.