A strategic approach where decisions and direction are set by top-level management and flow down through the organization, often aligned with overarching business goals. Crucial for ensuring strategic alignment and coherence across all levels of an organization.
Minimum Viable Feature (MVF) is the smallest possible version of a feature that delivers value to users and allows for meaningful feedback collection. Crucial for rapid iteration in product development, enabling teams to validate ideas quickly and efficiently while minimizing resource investment.
A brainstorming technique where participants intentionally suggest bad ideas to spur creative thinking and overcome mental blocks. Important for fostering creativity and out-of-the-box thinking during ideation sessions.
An approach to design that considers the entire user journey and all touchpoints, ensuring a seamless and cohesive experience. Crucial for creating integrated and satisfying user experiences across multiple channels and interactions.
The systematic computational analysis of data or statistics to understand and improve business performance. Essential for data-driven decision making in design, product management, and marketing.
The series of stages a product goes through from initial concept to market release, including planning, design, development, testing, and launch. Essential for understanding the full lifecycle of product creation and bringing products to market efficiently.
Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is a framework for improving and optimizing processes within an organization. Essential for assessing and enhancing the maturity and efficiency of processes in product design and development.
A structured set of breakpoints used to create responsive designs that work seamlessly across multiple devices. Important for maintaining consistency and usability in responsive design.
The process of handling changes to software, hardware, or documentation in a systematic way. Critical for maintaining consistency and ensuring system integrity.
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.
Product-Oriented Delivery (POD) is a methodology that focuses on organizing teams around products rather than projects. This approach is essential for enhancing product focus, agility, and cross-functional collaboration.
A usability inspection method where experts review a user interface against a set of heuristics to identify usability issues. Crucial for identifying usability problems early in the design process.
A hybrid Agile project management framework that combines elements of Scrum and Kanban to improve flexibility and workflow management. Useful for teams seeking to blend the structured approach of Scrum with the visual workflow of Kanban.
The use of data and insights to understand and manage relationships with customers and prospects. Crucial for enhancing customer engagement and building stronger relationships.
An organization that places the product at the center of its operations, ensuring that all departments align their efforts to support product development and success. Crucial for creating a cohesive and focused approach to product development and business growth.
The process of generating a broad set of ideas on a given topic, with no attempt to judge or evaluate them initially. Crucial for creative problem-solving and developing innovative solutions in product design and development.
A model of organizational change management that involves preparing for change (unfreeze), implementing change (change), and solidifying the new state (refreeze). Important for successfully implementing and sustaining changes in product design processes and organizational practices.
Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task (HEART) is a framework used to measure and improve user experience success. Important for systematically evaluating and enhancing user experience.
The practice of using data analytics and metrics to make informed decisions, focusing on measurable outcomes and efficiency rather than intuition or traditional methods. Important for optimizing design processes, improving product performance, and making data-driven decisions that enhance user experience and business success.
A psychological model that outlines the stages individuals go through to change behavior, including precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. Crucial for designing interventions and experiences that support users at different stages of behavior change.
The application of behavioral science principles to improve the design and usability of digital products, focusing on user behavior and interactions. Important for creating user experiences that are intuitive and engaging by leveraging behavioral insights.
The process of preparing, equipping, and supporting individuals to successfully adopt change to drive organizational success and outcomes. Crucial for ensuring smooth transitions and effective implementation of new processes or systems.
A preliminary version of a project or system used to test and validate its feasibility before full-scale implementation. Crucial for identifying potential issues and making necessary adjustments to improve the final product.
A design process model that outlines four phases: Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver, promoting both divergent and convergent thinking. Crucial for structuring the design process and fostering both creativity and precision.
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is a discipline that incorporates aspects of software engineering and applies them to infrastructure and operations problems to create scalable and highly reliable software systems. Crucial for maintaining the reliability and efficiency of complex software systems.
A cognitive approach where information is processed at a surface level, focusing on basic features rather than deeper meaning, often leading to poorer memory retention. Important for designing educational and informational content that encourages deeper processing and understanding.
A design approach that divides a system into smaller parts or modules that can be independently created, modified, replaced, or exchanged. Crucial for creating flexible, scalable, and maintainable systems.
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.
Managing product development with a focus on understanding and influencing user behavior through behavioral science principles. Essential for product managers to create user-centric products that drive desired behaviors.
A strategic research process that involves evaluating competitors' products, services, and market positions to identify opportunities and threats. Essential for informing product strategy, differentiating offerings, and gaining a competitive advantage in the market.
Integrated Business Planning (IBP) is a process that aligns strategic, operational, and financial planning to optimize business performance. It ensures cohesive and efficient planning across all functions.
ModelOps (Model Operations) is a set of practices for deploying, monitoring, and maintaining machine learning models in production environments. Crucial for ensuring the reliability, scalability, and performance of AI systems throughout their lifecycle, bridging the gap between model development and operational implementation.
A broader, more informal community of interest that spans across the entire organization, focusing on shared topics such as agile practices or UX design. Valuable for cross-functional learning, knowledge sharing, and promoting a unified approach to common challenges.
A research method where participants take photographs of their activities, environments, or interactions to provide insights into their behaviors and experiences. Important for gaining in-depth, visual insights into user contexts and behaviors.
The evaluation of products based on their ability to influence and shape user behavior. Useful for assessing how well a product guides and influences user actions and decisions.
The four key elements of marketing: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion, used to develop marketing strategies. Important for creating comprehensive marketing strategies that effectively promote digital products.
A design strategy that prioritizes the mobile user experience by designing for mobile devices first before scaling up to larger screens. Crucial for creating accessible and responsive designs that work well on all devices.
Getting Things Done (GTD) is a productivity methodology that emphasizes capturing tasks, organizing them, and taking action. Essential for improving personal and team productivity and task management.
A methodology for creating design systems by breaking down interfaces into their basic components (atoms, molecules, organisms, templates, and pages). Essential for creating scalable and maintainable design systems.
A seamless and integrated customer experience across multiple channels, such as online, mobile, and in-store. Crucial for providing a consistent and cohesive user experience, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty in digital products.
The combined efforts of humans and AI systems to achieve better outcomes than either could alone. Important for leveraging the strengths of both humans and AI in various tasks.
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.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is an AI approach that combines retrieval of relevant documents with generative models to produce accurate and contextually relevant responses. Essential for improving the accuracy and reliability of AI-generated content.
An approach where designers and non-designers work together throughout the design process to create user-centric solutions. Crucial for creating more inclusive and effective design outcomes.
The approach a company takes to manage and market its portfolio of products, ensuring each product supports the overall business strategy. Important for optimizing the range of products offered to maximize market reach and profitability.
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.
The sequence of phases through which a product or project passes from conception to completion. Essential for managing and tracking the progress of development projects.
A structured communication technique originally developed as a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts. Important for gathering expert opinions and making informed decisions.
A project or venture that starts from scratch, with no constraints imposed by prior work, enabling innovation and flexibility in development. Essential for recognizing opportunities for innovation and fresh development in business initiatives.
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.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development. Essential for validating product ideas quickly and cost-effectively, allowing teams to learn about customer needs without fully developing the product.
Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) is an iterative four-step management method used for continuous improvement of processes and products. Essential for quality control and operational efficiency.
A research approach that starts with observations and develops broader generalizations or theories from them. Useful for discovering patterns and generating new theories from data.
A design approach that uses data, algorithms, and predictive analytics to anticipate user needs and behaviors, creating more personalized and effective experiences. Crucial for enhancing user experience through anticipation and personalization.
A programming paradigm aimed at improving the clarity, quality, and development time of software by using structured control flow constructs. Essential for writing clear, maintainable, and efficient code in digital product development.
A systematic evaluation of all features in a product to determine their usage, effectiveness, and alignment with business goals. Essential for optimizing product performance and user satisfaction.
Top of Funnel (ToFu) is the initial stage in the sales funnel where potential customers become aware of a product or service. Crucial for generating leads and building brand awareness.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the systematic process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form. Crucial for improving user engagement and achieving business goals.
Product Development is the process of bringing a new product to market or improving an existing one. Crucial for innovation, meeting customer needs, and maintaining a competitive edge.
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.