100+ PM Interview Glossary

Here's a list of 100+ common vocabulary used by product managers

My PM Interview

Dec 9, 2021

Here's a list of common vocabulary used by product managers:

A/B Test:

A/B testing is a method of comparing two versions of a webpage or app against each other to determine which one performs better. Often, an A/B test will give 50% of users experience “A” and the other 50% experience “B.” Product managers often help choose which variant is better (“A” or “B”) based on metric analysis.

E.g. “Let’s do an A/B test to see which version of the landing page our users prefer!”

API:

Stands for Application Programming Interface. A product's API extends the functionality of the product to other parties. For instance, a Facebook API might allow other products (like Venmo) to use Facebook log-in to authenticate users.

Agile
A modern set of principles for product development that emphasizes the rapid deployment of success iterations (created in so-called "sprints") giving you multiple opportunities to gather feedback, improve your product, and gain small wins.
E.g. “We use agile because our products require constant updates and consistent feedback on iterations.”

To help you with your Product Manager interview preparations, we have compiled a complete list of the most asked Product Management Interview Questions and Answers at companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, etc.

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Acceptance Criteria
What does the client need, and under what circumstances will these needs be realized? In the agile development process, Acceptance Criteria gives you a constant, clear understanding of what the client/customer needs, so you can reference this against every iteration you deploy.

E.g. “According to the acceptance criteria, the clients need a product that will automate their work on a daily basis, and send them hourly updates.”

Affinity Diagram

A method to experiment with two versions of a single variable to gauge a subject's response to each variant.

E.g. “Our affinity diagram made targeting for our product easier because it gave us a clearer sense of the different groups that were using our Product.”

Beta Test

A trial phase of the product's launch. This is usually scoped to a select group of early adopter users, and the product may still have bugs in it.

E.g. “We just completed the beta test with Bill from Happy Company, and now we are good to launch it to the market!”

Backlog
Tasks - normally bugs that need fixing - that are important but not urgent, and have been listed to be completed at a non-specific date in the future when time and resources become available

E.g. “Now that the product launch is taken care of, I’ll take a look at my tasks in the backlog… Or maybe I’ll just have a look tomorrow.”

BI: Business Intelligence

Strategies and technologies that a business incorporates to manage and analyze large amounts of data for business information. Also a position within companies that is generally held by a clever colleague of yours.

E.g.“The BI team decided that based on the data they gathered, it was time to switch up how we delivered our product to the market.”

Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page.

Concept Review
Your concept is the initial idea for a new product, with some sense of how it is going to be implemented. A Concept Review is a discussion where you evaluate different or competing concepts, and decide which ones you're going to invest in and see through to completion.

E.g. “We decided during the concept review that between a delivery smoothie app, a delivery milkshake app, or an all-in-one app, that we would go with the all-in-one option. Now both the smoothie and milkshake users can be happy!”

Customer Journey Map
A diagram that shows visually the stages a customer goes through when using your product, from the trigger, need or pain point that motivates them to begin using your product, through the actual use all the way through to resolution and the achievement of their goal.

E.g. “When we reviewed the customer journey map, we saw that our customers were leaving our smoothie app at the checkout stage.”

Customer Success
The resolution of the pain point that drove your customer to use your product. This is the final destination - they have successfully achieved the result that your product is set out to deliver or facilitate.
E.g.“We knew we achieved customer success when customers left 5-star reviews saying they had finally found the best app to get their smoothies.”

Churn Rate

Generally referred to the turnover rate of users or customers of a product. It's also commonly referred to as attrition rate.
E.g. “We initially had a low churn rate, but now customers are signing up and leaving like our product is a revolving door!”

Cross-Functional Team
A group of people who have complimentary - but varying - skill sets that work together to complete a product or project.
E.g. “Gary from Marketing, Gaby from BI, Shoshanna the engineer, and Billiam from platform are on the cross-functional team that is building the smoothie app.”

Conversion Rate:

The percentage of visitors to a particular website who complete a desired goal (e.g. pay for a service)

CTR:

Stands for “clickthrough rate.” The percentage of people visiting a web page who access a hypertext link to a particular advertisement.
Customer Segment:

Customer segmentation is the process of dividing customers into groups based on common characteristics so companies can market to each group effectively and appropriately.
Data Product Manager
A relatively new, specialized Product Management role focused on the use, management, and application of data and machine learning, more typically found in large, analytically oriented customers, often in the financial sector.
E.g.“We just recruited a new Data Product Manager to run the Machine Learning side of our smoothie app.”

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Design Concept
What is the broad, big picture idea behind what you are trying to design? This will be connected to the problem you are trying to solve and the real-world customer journey.
E.g. “Our initial design concept was to create an interface that allows people to order up to 5 smoothies per week. Now, we are expanding our vision! We created the interface to allow for unlimited smoothie orders.”

Design Thinking
Where Product Management and Design best practices converge - how can your product integrate into the real life of your end user, so it can effectively solve their problem under challenging conditions.
E.g.“Design Thinking was a major component for the Smoothie App’s UX and engineering team when constructing the concept.”

Differentiation
We live in a competitive world and if your product is to succeed it must be distinct from other products in your marketplace. Similar to USP (Unique Selling Point), differentiation is the way in which your product is different from other similar products on the market.
E.g.“Differentiation was key for our smoothie app because there are a lot of food apps in the world, but we wanted to be specialized and distinct by providing a service for one product.”

Divergent Thinking
There's more than one way to hammer a nail. Divergent Thinking a is a style of brainstorming where you begin with your problem, and think of various different, creative ways to solve it.
E.g. “There was a lightbulb moment during our divergent thinking session that spawned the idea for our newest product.”

DevOps
An infinite loop of practices, philosophies, and tools that are used to increase the velocity of a product lifecycle as it pertains to iterations, updates, and fixes.
E.g.“Our DevOps allow us to quickly make changes to the smoothie app, so all bugs, updates, and fixes can be delivered quickly.”

DAU/MAU:

Stands for daily active users or monthly active users. DAU and MAU are metrics used to determine how many users are using a product on a regular basis. For instance, a daily active user describes a user that uses a product on a daily basis. Generally, companies want high DAU/MAU metrics.
Dogfood:

Using a product internally to test it before publicly releasing it. One might dogfood a new Google Maps feature (just have the Google Maps team use it to test it out) before launching it into beta mode.

End-to-End
Refers to every stage of the roadmap, journey or process - from start to finish.
E.g. “The team has covered the roadmap end-to-end, and they are now ready to launch the product.”

Epic
To describe the strategic goal of a product, you often need more than one feature or story. Rather, you need a group of features or stories to comprise this strategic goal. This is what Epic is in Agile.
E.g. “The Epic for our Smoothie app describes how we plan to bring smoothie delivery to every household.”

Early Adopters:

These users use the product as soon as it is available. These are often the product's most dedicated fans, and are likely to be beta testers.
FDD: Feature-Driven Development
A software development process popular within the Agile model that emphasizes and creates small chunks of client-focused value, i.e features.
E.g. “Our team shifted focus to FDD to find out which unique features delighted our customers the most.”

Feature
An aspect of your product that delivers value by meeting a requirement of your customer - such as performing a function that helps solve your client's problem or gets them closer to achieving the desired result.
E.g. “Customers were demanding that the app contained delivery tracking, so we added that feature.”

Feature Audit
A map laying out all the features that you want to develop so you can check them against your customer/client's requirements and make sure you are delivering the results that you need to.
E.g. “Because the customers had a new set of demands, we did a feature audit to see what needed to be met to create the necessary solutions.”

Fundamentally New Product
We all like to claim that what we create is new, but few products really are. A Fundamentally New Product is unique at a core level, providing functionality and/or results that have not been seen before in an industry.
E.g. “All the competitors claim that they made a Fundamentally New Product, but the truth is we were the first company to create a smoothie app, which means WE created a fundamentally new product.”

Freemium
Want to get users to use your product? Start by giving users free access to your services.
E.g. “Before we start charging our customers for the app, we are going to first give them our freemium model.”

Get Out of the Building
Most of us work in nice, controlled environments. But your customer won't be using your product in a corporate office. They'll be using it in the messy, chaotic real world. Get Out of the Building is short hand for leaving your comfort zone and getting to know your customers in their own environment.
E.g. “We had no idea what our customers really wanted, so we had to Get Out of the Building.”

Growth Product Management
A niche Product Management role focused on optimizing for user acquisition as your main KPI.
E.g. “There was a significant concern that not enough users were downloading our app, so we shifted focus to Growth Product Management.”

GTM: Go-to-Market Strategy
Want to deliver your amazing new product to users? You are going to need a go-to-market strategy; or in other words, a plan based on inside and outside resources to present your unique value proposition to customers.
E.g. “After reviewing all the data that we collected, plus doing thousands of interviews with target customers, we have finally developed our Go-to-Market Strategy so we can get our product into their hands ASAP.”

Hard Skills

Industry-specific skills that can be directly acquired through training, such as coding or design.

E.g. “While our PMs are really incredible at empathizing and communicating, they need to get more tech-savvy and develop more hard skills.”

Ideation

The process of forming new ideas and mapping them out either visually through mind mapping, through a list, or simply through conversation.
E.g. “Through some intensive ideation, we were able to come up with a groundbreaking idea.”
Implicit Requirement

A function or need your product must serve that is not explicitly or directly stated by your client but is apparent through context or circumstance.

E.g. “It was clear that moving the call to action button was an implicit requirement considering no users knew how to upgrade.”

Incremental Product

A model where each successful version transcends the previous version without necessarily replacing it - the new version improves on what came before, but the previous version is still functional.

E.g. “Our latest app is the culmination of many rounds of incremental product development.”

Intuitive

A product that is intuitive to use is one that feels easy smooth and natural because it fits neatly into our existing habits and mental models.

E.g. “The intuitive interface of LinkedIn’s app has made it simple for professionals to connect online.”

Impression:

An instance of a pop-up or other Web advertisement being seen on computer users' screens.

JTBD: Jobs-To-Be-Done

A useful way of looking at the Value Proposition of a product is to imagine that the customer has a series of "jobs" to be performed in their lives, and that your product can help by performing one or more of those jobs for them.

E.g. “When developing the latest money transfer app, the PMs had to look at the JTBD of people who needed to send money quickly and efficiently.”

Kanban

A scheduling system developed by Taiichi Ohno of Toyota and popular in lean manufacturing.

E.g. “The waterfall method was simply not working for our company, so we switched over to the leaner Kanban model.”

Kano Model

Professor Noriaki Kano is to thank for creating this theory of product development. The main characteristics here revolve around breaking down customer preferences into 5 categories, and developing products based on these categories.

E.g. “With our customer’s preferences being neatly compartmentalized, we decided to switch over to the Kano model of product development.”

KPI: Key Performance Indicator
The metrics that matter the most when evaluating the performance of a product.
E.g. “With our latest e-commerce product launch, increasing repurchase and conversion rate were the most important KPIs.”

Lean Development

A philosophy or strategy of software development that prioritizes the minimization of waste and the most efficient application of resources.

E.g. “While creating our latest products, we wanted to trim the fat of the development process, so we switched over to Lean Development.”

Lifetime Value

Lifetime value represents the total amount of money your customer is expected to spend on your business, product, or service during their entire lifetime.

E.g. “After some calculations, we theorized that the lifetime value is $1,000 per customer.”

Low-hanging fruit:

An easy product or feature change that can substantially improve metrics. For instance, adding a button to the homepage for users to purchase a product might be a "low-hanging fruit."

Mind Map

A visual tool whereby ideas, plans and concepts are arranged around a broad central idea, which each "branch" leading to off to progressively more detailed or specific thoughts.

E.g. “We used Mind Mapping to develop the external features of the product so we could have a more complete vision.”

MVE: Minimum Viable Experience

While Minimum Viable Products (MVP) focus on what you create, MVE focuses on the service you deliver to your customer - what's the quickest, leanest and most efficient way to deliver an experience that meets the needs of your customer for the purpose of gathering feedback and refining your offer.

E.g. “Creating an MVE for our car rental app was critical as we wanted our users to be able to rent a car with as few steps as possible.”

MVP: Minimum Viable Product

What is the quickest, cheapest and most efficient way you can deliver on your value proposition and thus attain real-world feedback from your market?

E.g. “Before we start developing a more complex model, we have to release our MVP.”

MoSCoW
Our team needed to decide which tasks were of the utmost importance, and which could wait. To decide, we used the MoSCoW method

E.g. “Our team needed to decide which tasks were of the utmost importance, and which could wait. To decide, we used the MoSCoW method.”

Mobile Web / Native:

“Native” often refers to apps downloaded to a smartphone or computer. Web apps are those that are accessed via a URL. For instance, the Facebook app is a native app. The Facebook.com on a mobile Google Chrome browser in one’s smartphone is on the mobile web platform.

Needfinding
The process of learning about your users and potential customers and uncovering the problems they face that your product could solve for them.

E.g. “Each department performed some needfinding so we could be sure that our product filled all the needs of each customer and potential customer.”

NPS

The NPS or Net Promoter Score is a deviation from the standard way of measuring the loyalty or satisfaction of a customer to a company. Additionally, the NPS states that this score is correlated to the financial growth of a company.

E.g. “Through our NPS, we realized that our company could improve on inspiring more loyalty within our customer base.”

North Star Metric:

The single metric that best captures the success of your product. Of course, no metric will tell a full story, but the north star metric is the top, most important metric a product manager would select.

OKR: Objectives & Key Results

Objectives and Key Results - a goal-setting system associated with companies like Google that prioritizes focusing on clear and measurable/trackable results.

E.g. “Before we launched our product, we had to lay out strict OKRs to know exactly what we were trying to accomplish.”

Product

A purchasable, downloadable, or freely attainable entity - be it something physical, downloadable, or accessible online - that delivers value.

E.g. “We just released our first product to the market. A smoothie delivery app that is free to download.”

Persona or UserPersona

A fictitious representation of your typical user or customer - a useful tool for getting a clearer image of your end user so you can make more targeted and empathetic decisions.

E.g. “After creating our User Persona, we realized that we needed to make some alterations to our product after we had a clearer image of what our users are seeking through our product.”

Prioritization

Product Managers rarely have enough resources to achieve everything on their to-do list. Prioritization is the art and science of deciding what is important to do now, and what can wait until later, based on balancing cost with benefit (resources required versus potential reward).

E.g. “Our PM is an expert at prioritization. She knows what needs to be done now, soon, and later. She knows exactly which tasks are a priority.”

Product Description Sheet

A brief summary of the function of your product and its target audience, normally created at the planning stage as a tool for team members and potential investors

E.g. “The investors could have a clearer understanding of who our target audience is, plus what our product does and the price we’ll sell it for if we presented to them our Product Description Sheet.“

Prototype

The first ever version of a particular product, often experimental and for internal use only, it allows you to test functionality and also is a useful aid for sales and investor acquisition

E.g. “The prototype of our app had tons of bugs, but since it was our first version, we were able to gather a tremendous amount of information based on the customer feedback.”

Product Designer

Someone responsible for the look and feel of a particular product, in the software industry design is focused around User Experience (UX).

E.g. “Our Product Designer did a stellar job creating a unique feel and experience for when our customers use our products.”

Product Discovery
A process undertaken at an early stage of Product Development to ensure that your product meets the needs of its potential users, has a market, and creates unique and desirable value.

E.g. “During Product Discovery, we could safely say that our product has a market, meets the needs of a customer, and adds value to their lives. How could a smoothie app not do that?”

Product Marketing

The public need to be informed about the wonderful product you have created - Product Marketing is about defining a brand and choosing the story you will tell about your product, and clearly communicating your Value Proposition to the people it is aimed at.

E.g. “Since the Product Marketing team was super successful in depicting an amazing story of our product, we saw a tremendous amount of success and hit all of our KPIs.”

Product Portfolio

The full range of products created by a particular company, agency or Product Manager as part of a Resume or CV.

E.g. “The reason I got my job as a PM is because of my extensive and impressive Product Portfolio that “wowed” the interviewer.”

Product Spec

The required specifications of a particular product, taking into account compatibility on various devices and platforms and the needs of the end user.

E.g. “We had to delay our latest update on our app because it wasn’t compatible across all devices. This Product Spec was looked over by our engineering team.”

Product Vision

The long term, big picture goal for a particular product, normally held by the Product Manager or CEO. All decisions will be referenced against this vision, which you should constantly be moving towards.

E.g. “During the creation of our app, we came up with a product vision that everyone in urban areas would download our delivery smoothie app.”

Product-Market Fit

The highly desirable stage when everything clicks into place, your product is being happily taken up by your market at a price point that works for them and is profitable for you. At this stage you have your ducks in a row - double down and grow!

E.g. “Once our company hit Product-Market fit, we knew it was time to celebrate! We were making money, and our customers were still demanding
more.”

Personalization

Creating a customized experience with a product or service to delight individual users and customers.

E.g. “Since customers were not happy with the generic model of the product, we personalized the in-app experience. This way they could have a unique,
custom experience.”

Product Lifecycle

Products have a life just like any living thing. For products, their are generally 4 stages to their lifecycle: Introduction, Growth, Maturity, and Decline. While products don't have uniform lifecycles, you can expect nearly all products to go through these stages.

E.g. “After the initial phase of introduction, we were lucky to see that our Product Lifecycle had a very long growth phase, quality maturity, and a slow
decline.”

Product Owner

Are you the person who defines your product story? Do you prioritize which tasks for your team to facilitate execution of tasks? If so, then you are probably a Product Owner.

E.g. “While our team is incredible, our Product Owner does a masterful job in describing the story of our latest product.”

Product Manager

One of the most critical roles in a company. Product Managers are the quarterbacks of a business' product. They touch on nearly all aspects of development by being the link between departments and phases.
E.g. “The Product Manager we hired is an expert in helping develop products, launch them to market, communicating unilaterally, and empathizing with customer needs.”

Pain Point:

A pain point is a problem that prospective customers or users are experiencing. Pain point identification is helpful to generate targeted solutions.

Product Roadmap:

High-level summary of a product's vision and direction over time.

R&D

Research & Development (R&D) is about taking things to the next level by improving your company's technology through the discovery of what is possible (research) and the creation of original solutions and tools (development).

E.g. “With the time we spent on R&D, our research concluded that we needed to add new features that would provide solutions for our customers. We then began to develop these features and delight our customers.”

Retrospective

Retrospective means to look back - in the product cycle, these typically take place after a launch so you can assess what went well and what didn't so you can improve next time around.

E.g. “We knew that we had to take a retrospective look at our product after the latest launch proved to be less successful than anticipated.”

Roadmap

The essential strategy document for all product managers, it lays out your vision, and the stages between where you are now and the realization of that vision.

E.g. “Each member of our Product Management department agrees that our roadmap covers all the necessary components of our vision, milestones, and where the product will eventually be completed.”

Release Plan

Sometimes a product needs a flowchart that describes the features that will be presented in upcoming releases. This is what a Release Plan accomplishes.

E.g. “Customers became super excited about the latest features in our latest product after the release plan was leaked to the public.”

Refactor:

A restructuring of the existing computer code. There are a variety of reasons for a code refactor. Often, refactors are advantageous because they accelerate product development or reduce vulnerabilities.

ROI:

Stands for return on investment.

Scrum

A framework used within Agile software development that emphasizes flexibility and gives a great deal of autonomy to engineers and developers who are expected to be able to solve problems without rigorous instruction based on their own skill and technical knowledge.

E.g. “Since switching over to Scrum, our engineers have been much more productive now that they are largely working autonomously.”

Ship

An aquatic seafaring vessel... just kidding. In Product Management, "ship" is a verb - it means to complete and successfully deliver your product, ideally within budget and on time!

E.g. “One of the biggest challenges we faced with our newest hardware product was when we had to ship it. Yet we managed to get it into all retailers, and even did it under budget!”

Six Thinking Hats

A framework for thinking and discussion developed by Edward de Bono, it structures thought and conversion around six categories: Managing, Information, Emotions, Discernment, Optimistic response and Creativity.

E.g. “As a team, we were not communicating well, so we switched up our methods and began using the framework of the Six Thinking Hats.”

Soft Skills

In contrast to hard skills that can be directly taught, soft skills are traits like empathy, emotional intelligence and persuasiveness that take an individual longer to develop, but can still be learned through personal development and emulation.

E.g. “Although our engineering department is very adept with their hard/technical skills, they lack communication skills and empathy. We told them they need to improve their soft skills.”

Sprint

A defined time frame during which a new feature, product or piece of software needs to be completed and made ready for review by a dedicated team, popular within Agile development.

E.g. “The product team set up a sprint in order to complete the latest feature of our smoothie app.”

Stage-Gate

Also known as "phase-gate" or "waterfall," this is a product development process or methodology where your work is divided into separate stages, each defined by their own criteria and decision points.

E.g. “Processes were moving too slow for us when we used Stage-Gate, so we switched to an agile method.”

Stakeholder

A stakeholder is someone who has a vested interest in your product - this could be your clients, customers, investors or senior management. Stakeholder management involves balancing the often conflicting demands of these people while also meeting their needs within the bounds of possibility.

E.g. “Since the stakeholders had a major say in the direction of the product, we had to deliver them daily reports.”

Technical Product Manager

A niche Product Management role where the PM is expected to have a high level of technical proficiency and may be more involved in the day to day coding and software engineering activities than a standard Product Manager.

E.g. “Before we launched our latest feature, we encountered a bug in the checkout cart. Our Technical Product Manager was able to fix this bug with his extensive knowledge of coding.”

UX: User Experience

The level of ease, intuitiveness and satisfaction that your product gives the user - is it easy and natural to use your product, or difficult and frustrating?

E.g. “Changing the UX of our website was critical because our customers were getting confused while navigating the pages of our site.”

User Flows

In most cases, when a customer or user is interacting with a product, they are going on a tiny journey. The paths they take on this mini journey is what is known as the User Flow.

E.g. “From the landing to the checkout page, our goal is to make our User Flow as enjoyable as possible.”

User Research

In order to understand the behavior, desire, and drive of your customer, you must conduct User Research.

E.g. “We had no idea what our target audience really wanted until we conducted an extensive User Research.”

USP: Unique Selling Proposition

What defines your product from competitors' products? Your Unique Selling Proposition! Your USP is what separates you from the rest, while solidifying your product as distinctive.

E.g. “Because of our USP, we were able to gain a hold of the majority of the market share because no one else was offering the solution that we created, a smoothie app.”

Use Case

When one needs to achieve a goal, generally there needs to be a list of actions that define the step-by-step process between the role and the system. Use Case represents this list of actions.

E.g. “The Use Case that was lined out helped me achieve my target goal.”

UI: User interface. This is the means by which the user and computing system interact. UI most often refers to the design of the application or website.
Voice of Customer (VOC)

Your customer's experience of your product and their needs and problems in their own words - an essential element of user research.

E.g. “During User Research, we found through the VOC that they were experiencing serious stress when trying to finalize their order with our app.”

Value Proposition

To attract customers it is imperative to offer a product, innovation, or service that will be useful in their lives. The promise of delivering value through one of these is known as the Value Proposition.

E.g. “The Value Proposition with our app was that our customers would never have to search for their smoothie fix ever again. We gave them value that they could not resist.”
Waterfall

An approach to engineering and product development that goes through the entire end-to-end creation lifecycle in one phase. Considered inflexible for this reason, it has fallen out of favor in the software industry.

E.g.“Our product team used to create products following the waterfall method. However, we were unable to make quick iterations, and thus we abandoned it due to its rigidity.”

What Not How

A strategic approach to problem solving and planning that emphasizes end goals and results, not processes. As a Product Manager you should be free to focus on the vision "What," while trusting your engineering team to come up with the "How."

E.g. “WHAT we wanted to accomplish was the key focus with our smoothie app. We left the *HOW* to the engineers to figure out the processes to get to the *WHAT*”.

Wireframe

Having a visual representation of an interface in its most basic form can be critical in defining the User Interface. This bare visual representation is known as Wireframing.

E.g. “While we had not created any substantial portion of our product, the Wireframe was a very promising start.”