1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes. Explore my new book on realprogressbook.com
From Product Jargon to Plain English
From Product Jargon
|
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?
"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
Get my Book
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.
Product Practice Newsletter
1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes. Explore my new book on realprogressbook.com
Product Practice #402 Product Discovery forInternal Enabler Teams PUBLISHED Apr 2, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO Dear Reader, Because the customers of your product just sit three desks away, you might think you can just "talk to them." And that's precisely what often leads to the low adoption of better product practices among product teams working on internal products (also sometimes called Enabler Teams). And why, when a user has a company email address, it is likely nobody's doing discovery on...
Product Practice #401 How to Close Your Confidence Loop PUBLISHED Mar 26, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO Dear Reader, Most teams can tell you what they're building. Far fewer can tell you why it matters and how they will know it has worked. And I mean in a connected, defensible way that traces from their next release or discovery back to a company goal. That gap is where confidence lives (or doesn't). The confidence loop describes the critical questions you need to be able to answer and connect to...
Product Practice #400 Get your North Star Metric Reviewed by me PUBLISHED Mar 19, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO Dear Reader, To celebrate the 400th edition of this newsletter (🥳), I thought, why not try something different: Share your current North Star Metric and some high-level context with me through the form below, and I'll send you a personalized review video - for FREE and without AI processing. Just me, in front of a camera, sharing my thoughts on your North Star Metric. There's no hook,...