From Product Jargon
to Plain English

​Dear Reader,​
​
I often feel that, somewhere along the way, we, as an industry, started optimizing for sounding like product people instead of speaking like humans in plain English (or any other language).

What would happen if we dropped the product lingo and used plain English to describe what's needed? I find it increasingly liberating for product teams to describe their work in plain language rather than throwing fancy terms at team members and stakeholders.

Here are some of my favorite examples I come across in my work, along with how to simplify them using plain English.

"Product Operating Model" → How would teams work when we put measurable business and customer value before feature completion and requirement correctness?
​
​"Strategic Playing Field" → For whom are we trying to solve what problem, and who else tries to do that?
​
​"Outcome OKRs" → How can we measure if we changed our customers' behavior?
​
​"Opportunity Solution Trees" → How do features drive business goals by solving customer problems?
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​"Leading Indicators" → What would tell us early if what we're doing works, before it's too late to adjust?
​
​"Experiments" → How can we find out if we can and should build this, before building it?
​
The jargon isn't the problem. It's when the jargon replaces the thinking. But reducing the jargon helps create space for the thinking.

Next time you try to talk about a practice, pause and think about what it really is that should be achieved. Then, say it like it is. Without the jargon labels.
​
(and, yes, I'm sometimes part of choosing the lingo of the value behind words as well 🤷‍♂️)

Thank you for Practicing Product,

​Tim​

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Who is Tim Herbig?

As a Product Management Coach, I guide Product Teams to measure the real progress of their evidence-informed decisions.

I focus on better practices to connect the dots of Product Strategy, Product OKRs, and Product Discovery.