User Experience (UX) refers to the overall experience of a person using a product, system, or service, encompassing all aspects of the end-user's interaction. Crucial for creating products that are not only functional but also enjoyable, efficient, and satisfying to use.
The practice of quickly testing and iterating on ideas to validate assumptions and learn from user feedback in a short time frame. Essential for agile development and making data-driven decisions efficiently.
A non-production environment used for development and testing before deployment to production. Important for ensuring that changes are thoroughly tested before going live.
Software Requirements Specification (SRS) is a detailed document that outlines the functional and non-functional requirements of a software system. Crucial for ensuring clear communication and understanding between stakeholders and the development team.
A framework for discovering and validating the right market for a product, building the right product features, and validating the business model. Important for ensuring that products meet market needs and customer expectations.
Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a method used to transform customer needs into engineering characteristics for a product or service. Essential for ensuring that customer requirements are systematically incorporated into the design and development process.
The loss of customers over a specific period, also known as customer churn. Important for understanding and addressing customer retention issues.
A strategic framework used to analyze the external macro-environmental factors affecting an organization: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal. Essential for strategic planning and understanding market dynamics.
A detailed description of a system's behavior as it responds to a request from one of its stakeholders, often used to capture functional requirements. Essential for understanding and documenting how users will interact with a system to achieve their goals.
The competitive advantage gained by the initial significant occupant of a market segment, which can lead to brand recognition and customer loyalty. Important for understanding the benefits and risks of being an early entrant in a new market.
Click-Through Rate (CTR) measures the percentage of users who click on a specific link out of the total users who view a page, email, or advertisement. This metric is important for assessing the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns and user engagement.
The process of creating an early model of a product to test and validate ideas, features, and design choices before full-scale production. Essential for validating design choices and gathering user feedback early in the development process.
The percentage of leads that convert into customers. Crucial for measuring the effectiveness of marketing and sales efforts.
Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) is the portion of the Serviceable Addressable Market that a company can realistically capture. Essential for setting achievable sales and market share goals.
The final interaction a customer has with a brand before making a purchase. Important for understanding which touchpoints drive conversions.
The practice of comparing one's performance, processes, or practices to those of peers or competitors to identify areas for improvement. Important for understanding relative performance and identifying best practices for improvement.
User-Centered Design (UCD) is an iterative design approach that focuses on understanding users' needs, preferences, and limitations throughout the design process. Crucial for creating products that are intuitive, efficient, and satisfying for the intended users.
A usability testing method that measures the first click users make on a webpage to determine if they can successfully navigate to their goal. Essential for evaluating and improving the navigational structure of a website.
A preliminary testing method to check whether the most crucial functions of a software application work, without going into finer details. Important for identifying major issues early in the development process and ensuring the stability of digital products.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable measures used to evaluate the success of an organization, employee, or project in meeting objectives for performance. Essential for tracking progress, making informed decisions, and aligning efforts with strategic goals across various business functions, including product design and development.
A practice of performing testing activities earlier in the software development lifecycle to identify and address issues sooner. Essential for improving software quality, reducing defects, and accelerating development cycles in digital product design.
An algorithm used by Google Search to rank web pages in their search engine results, based on the number and quality of links to a page. Essential for understanding search engine optimization and improving website visibility.
The rate at which employees leave a company and are replaced by new hires, often used as a measure of organizational health and stability. Essential for understanding workforce dynamics and designing strategies to improve employee retention.
The tendency to overestimate how much our future preferences and behaviors will align with our current preferences and behaviors. Important for understanding user behavior and designing experiences that account for changes over time.
A theory that explains how individuals determine the causes of behavior and events, including the distinction between internal and external attributions. Crucial for understanding user behavior and designing experiences that address both internal and external factors.
The percentage of times a keyword appears in a text relative to the total number of words, used to evaluate the relevance and optimization of a webpage for specific search terms. Important for optimizing content for search engines without overstuffing keywords.
A software development practice where code changes are automatically deployed to production without manual intervention. Important for maintaining a high level of productivity and quality in software development.
Product Advisory Council (PAC) is a group of customers, industry experts, and stakeholders who provide feedback and guidance on a company's product strategy and development. Essential for aligning products with market needs and driving innovation.
A cognitive bias where people assume others share the same beliefs, values, or preferences as themselves. Important for helping designers avoid projecting their own biases and assumptions onto users during research and design.
Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a process for planning, creating, testing, and deploying an information system. Essential for managing the complexities of software development and ensuring project success.
A cognitive bias where people wrongly believe they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states, while treating others' introspections as unreliable. Important for designing experiences that account for discrepancies between user self-perception and actual behavior.
Also known as feature creep, the continuous addition of new features to a product, often beyond the original scope, leading to project delays and resource strain. Important for managing project scope and ensuring timely delivery.
A focus on the results or benefits of a project rather than the activities or deliverables produced. Crucial for ensuring that efforts are aligned with achieving meaningful results.
Adaptive Software Development (ASD) is a software development methodology that focuses on continuous adaptation to changing requirements and environments. Essential for managing changing requirements and ensuring agile project delivery.
The effort required for users to complete a task or interaction within a system. Essential for optimizing usability and minimizing user effort.
A dark pattern where availability is falsely limited to pressure users into making a purchase. Awareness of this deceptive practice is important to provide honest information about product availability.
A range of values, derived from sample statistics, that is likely to contain the value of an unknown population parameter. Essential for making inferences about population parameters and understanding the precision of estimates in product design analysis.
The process of managing multiple related projects in a coordinated way to achieve strategic business objectives. Crucial for ensuring alignment and efficiency across multiple projects to achieve broader goals.
A method of splitting a dataset into two subsets: one for training a model and another for testing its performance. Fundamental for developing and evaluating machine learning models in digital product design.
Application Release Automation (ARA) is the process of automating the release of applications, ensuring consistency and reducing errors. Crucial for accelerating the delivery of software updates and maintaining high-quality digital products.
SAFe is a framework designed to scale agile practices across large organizations by integrating agile and lean principles. It is widely used but criticized for its rigidity, bureaucratic structure, and potential to stifle true agile culture.
Product Requirements is a document that outlines the essential features, functionalities, and constraints of a product. Crucial for guiding the development process and ensuring all stakeholders have a shared understanding of the product's goals.
A metric that shows the revenue that a company can expect to receive annually from its customers for subscriptions or services. Essential for understanding business performance and growth potential.
A cognitive bias where people seek out more information than is needed to make a decision, often leading to analysis paralysis. Crucial for designing decision-making processes that avoid information overload for users.
The percentage of email recipients who open a given email. Important for measuring the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is the process of managing an application's development, maintenance, and eventual retirement throughout its lifecycle. Important for ensuring the sustainability and effectiveness of digital products over time.
A moment of significant change in a process or system, where the direction of growth, performance, or trend shifts markedly. Important for recognizing critical transitions in design or business strategies, enabling timely adjustments and informed decision-making.
Objectives and Key Results (OKR) is a goal-setting framework for defining and tracking objectives and their outcomes. Essential for aligning organizational goals, improving focus and engagement, and driving measurable results across teams and individuals.
An environment used for testing software to identify issues and ensure quality before production deployment. Important for detecting and fixing bugs to ensure the software's reliability and performance.
The percentage of customers who stop using a product or service during a specific time period. Essential for understanding customer retention and identifying areas for improvement.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a metric used to measure customer loyalty and satisfaction based on their likelihood to recommend a product or service to others. Crucial for gauging overall customer sentiment and predicting business growth through customer advocacy.
The comprehensive process of planning, executing, and overseeing all activities related to the introduction of a new product to the market. Crucial for coordinating efforts to ensure a successful product launch and achieving market impact.
A cognitive bias where individuals overestimate the accuracy of their judgments, especially when they have a lot of information. Important for understanding and mitigating overconfidence in user decision-making.
The implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy or limited solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer. Essential for understanding and managing the long-term impacts of short-term technical decisions.
A method of testing two identical versions of a webpage or app to ensure the accuracy of the testing tool. Important for validating the effectiveness of A/B testing tools and processes.
A brand architecture strategy where multiple distinct brands are managed under a single parent company. Crucial for managing diverse product lines and maximizing market reach.
Not Invented Here (NIH) syndrome refers to the aversion to using or buying products, research, or knowledge developed outside an organization. This mindset can hinder innovation and collaboration.
Enterprise Project Management (EPM) is a comprehensive approach to managing projects across an entire organization. Essential for coordinating complex, cross-functional projects and achieving organizational objectives.
A meeting held at the end of a project or development cycle, also known as a "post-mortem," to review what went well, what didn't, and how processes can be improved in the future. Crucial for continuous improvement and learning from past experiences to enhance future projects.
Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a strategic framework used to align an organization's business strategy with its IT infrastructure. Crucial for optimizing processes, improving agility, and ensuring that technology supports business goals.