ABCs of Product
A glossary of commonly used product terms for news organizations
This glossary of product terms for people who work in news organizations was originally presented by Mary Tyler March and Jessica Morrison at the News Product Alliance Summit in March 2021. In most cases, the definitions take an informal tone that we would expect to use when speaking with a colleague. The glossary is updated periodically with input from the News Product Alliance Community. To request an addition or update, contact Mary Tyler March.
Agile: A product development style with frequent, iterative launches or releases.
Asana, Trello, Jira, Aha, Monday, etc: These are all project management tools. Everyone has a favorite, but ultimately, the one that works best for your team is the best one for your team.
Average revenue per user, ARPU: Total revenue divided by the number of subscribers during a defined time period, i.e. month over month, quarterly.
Backlog: A list of the bug fixes, new features, changes to current features, systematic overhauls, or other development items a team is working on. These are often prioritized internally based on needs or resources.
Backlog grooming or refinement: A regular process during which the product owner and relevant team members review the backlog to ensure items are prioritized appropriately, up-to-date, ready to be picked up during an upcoming work cycle.
Beta testing: A research process during which a product team launches a product to a closed group of users to understand its performance in a real world setting and to uncover any potential usability issues or bugs before a wider launch.
Blocker: An event that stops or slows product development.
Bridge role: Hybrid roles in media organizations that work at the intersection of various departments and are able to understand and translate the needs of cross-departmental stakeholders. These roles often underpin collaboration among cross-departmental teams and processes.
Churn: The measure of how many users stop using a product.
Cross-functional team: A group of people from across departments with different functional expertises who collaborate from the beginning of a product’s lifecycle to meet a shared goal. Cross-functional teams break down traditional silos and increase the chance of success by bringing various expert perspectives together from the beginning.
DACI: A decision-making framework that includes a Driver (project leader), an Approver (person making the decision), Contributors (people whose expertise may be consulted in product development), and the Informed (stakeholders who are not directly connected with the product, but whose work might impacted by decisions).
Dependency: A connection between two tasks that requires one to be completed before the other.
Deployment: The process of publishing code that releases or launches a product or feature.
Documentation: A record of business policy, procedure, workflow, decisions, or other information that includes instructions or references. Documentation is often written but could be instructional video or other recorded format.
Empathetic design: A person-centered approach to product design that is guided by how a user interacts with the product and focuses on the users’ needs throughout development.
Feature: A unit of design that adds functionality and value to the user experience.
Gantt chart: A timeline with horizontal bars that shows how much work has been or will be completed over some period of time; can help you see dependencies.
An example of a Gantt chart. (Source: News Product Alliance)
Inclusive ideation: A process for generating ideas and solutions that includes a diversity of perspectives to help eliminate biases and bolster innovation.
Iterative process: A series of steps used to build on and improve a product throughout its lifecycle. In development, this often means short cycles of testing with audience feedback early on to guide progress and future updates.
Kanban: A workflow management style that prioritizes efficiency and continual delivery, over fixed releases of product. Tasks are placed in columns like Not Yet Started, In Research, In Design, In Development, In Review, or Completed to show work in progress.
Key performance indicator, KPI: A quantitative measure of performance to help you understand if your product is meeting a previously set goal, i.e. percent conversion of audience to sustaining membership, engaged users as % of newsletter readership
Level of effort, LOE: An estimation of the effort required to finish a task during a defined period of time. Teams estimate effort in lots of different ways. Common methods include using points, which are arbitrarily set by the team or t-shirt sizes like XS, S, M, L, or XL.
Maintenance: A phase of the product lifecycle that begins after a product has been developed and launched that requires little or no product development to remain beneficial to audience or business interests, but may include eliminating bugs or other issues as needed.
Minimum viable product, MVP: The version of your product with only the features necessary to glean feedback to guide future development. An MVP can validate your product’s worth to users or help you refocus your concept if necessary to minimize unnecessary work.
MOCHA: A project management framework that includes a Manager (who keeps owner on track, monitors progress, and offers feedback), an Owner (who is responsible for moving product development forward), the Consulted (people who provide feedback), a Helper (someone actively involved in product development), and an Approver (the person or group responsible for final sign-off on the product).
Net promoter score: A research metric used to figure out what your audience thinks about a product. It’s the outcome of all those “how likely are you to recommend this newsletter to a friend or a colleague?” questions you see.
Objectives and key results, OKRs: A goal-setting framework that describes what you want to achieve and how to do so. These can also be used to create linked goals, i.e. Objective: Increase newsletter engagement → Key result: Increase click-through rate from 3% to 6% by 1-year mark
An example of a user persona. (Source: News Product Alliance)
Persona: A fictional person that represents a member of an intended audience. Personas are designed to represent the qualities, needs and goals of a wider audience segment.
Prioritization: A process of deciding the importance or urgency of a task relative to others. Teams do this in many ways. The stakeholder team at Chemical & Engineering News uses fruit emoji (apple, tangerine, lemon) in Slack to prioritize incoming product requests.
Product: A tangible solution to a real world problem that gives people value. It can be technical, like an app, system, or tool, or it can sit at the intersection of needs and goals that advance a business strategy, like membership.
Product brief: A summary that defines a product's goals, plans, and reason for development.
Product launch: The planned and coordinated effort that gets your product out into the world. Product launches often involve pre-launch research and analysis, messaging to target audience(s), and developing plans to help with audience needs post-launch.
Product lifecycle: Stages in the development of a product, i.e. ideation, discovery, development (pre-launch and post-launch), growth, maintenance, retirement.
(Source: Canva)
Product manager: The person responsible for coordinating the development of an organization’s product with input from internal and external stakeholders. A product manager works with stakeholders (editorial, marketing, business, leadership, technology, etc.) to define and progress toward product goals.
Product portfolio: An overview of products in an organization that lists each product, defines product type and ownership, and tracks product status or lifecycle. A newsroom product portfolio might include categories like newsletters, podcasts, and membership programs.
Product owner: The person responsible for a product’s vision and direction. The product owner makes sure the work that is being done aligns with needs of the intended product audience, and may work with a product manager to prioritize and groom backlog items.
Project manager: The person who plays the lead role in planning, executing, and overseeing a project from development to launch and completion. This person often coordinates multiple teams and creates clear, attainable objectives with a roadmap to completion.
Proof of concept: An early draft of a product that can be used to determine its viability, or whether a product or product feature can be developed.
Postmortem: An organized, collaborative process for identifying the causes of a product’s successes and failures and used to iterate on processes and improve future product development.
Prototype: A functional draft of a product that can be used to understand how a product will be designed and used. This is a useful stage for identifying any bugs or potential issues with the product during development.
RACI/RASCI: A responsibility assignment matrix that includes the Responsible (a person doing work to complete a task), the Accountable (a person delegating and reviewing work), the Consulted (the people who provide feedback on how their work will be affected), and the Informed (the people who need to be kept up to date on progress).
Release: The act of putting something you’ve built out into the world. Think of it like hitting publish on a story or a story update.
Requirements: A detailed, descriptive list of features or actions used to define the shape of a technical project; usually gathered and documented before development begins.
Retrospective, retro: An organized, collaborative look back at how a project went. Common questions answered by the team during a retrospective include: what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what should do differently next time?
A pre-filled roadmap template from Miro. (Source: Miro)
Roadmap: A forward-looking list of business or product priorities, often visible to teams, the company, or the public. Roadmap initiatives or tasks might be grouped by time or feature.
Scope: The parameters of a project as defined in the requirements.
Scope creep: A change in requirements, often at the request of a stakeholder, that may result in additional time or resources needed to complete project
Scrum: A framework for helping teams develop, launch, and maintain products through cycles of testing, learning, and iteration.
Scrum master: The person in charge of ensuring that a team follows standardized product development processes and practices. The scrum master may be in charge of clearing blockers; fostering a good relationship between the product owner, the team, and various stakeholders; and keeping the team on track.
Sprint: A defined period of time when a team works to complete a set amount of work; common in agile development styles.
Stakeholder: The people with interest in or who may be affected by a product’s outcome. Stakeholders may be internal and cross-departmental (e.g. editorial, marketing, development, etc.), and external (e.g. product audience/user base).
Stakeholder management: The process of identifying the needs of stakeholders and aligning competing priorities.
Usability testing: The process of evaluating a product by testing it with your intended audiences. Testing involves defining learning objectives and designing usability exercises that allow you to observe how your testers interact with your product, without directing how the product is intended to be used. This can help identify whether your product meets its objectives, identify functional changes needed to improve user experience, and provide valuable feedback for whether your product satisfies audience needs.
Use case: A description of how users are expected to interact with a product or feature.
User experience, UX: What it’s like for a person to interact with a product or feature based on its design, function, and usability.
User journey: A diagram that visualizes a person’s relationship with a product over time and allows developers to better understand the product from a user’s perspective. It represents the various touchpoints (user interactions) with a product and also considers a person’s feelings, pain points, and triumphs throughout their relationship with the product.
User needs: The objectives a product must satisfy in order for the user to reach their desired outcome.
User stories: A short, goal-oriented description of a feature written from the perspective of a user.
UX research: A discipline aimed at understanding audience needs, behaviors and goals through observation and feedback.
Value proposition: A description of what benefit the user will get from your product. This is crucial to understand and define before product development begins.
Puedes leer la guía traducida y adaptada al español por nuestros aliados de SembraMedia aquí: El ABC de Producto en medios
Você pode ler o guia traduzido e adaptado para português por nossos aliados da AJOR aqui: ABC do Produto: Um glossário dos termos comuns da área de produto para organizações de notícias
Puoi leggere questa guida tradotta e adattata in italiano dalla nostra associata Clara Attene: L’ABC del product management nei media