The lean product development stage is where startups turn their ideas into reality. Successful startups use analytical approaches to craft a useful product and make critical tweaks based on observing customer-product interactions.
Hungry for more startup terms? Take a look at all ten sections of our Startup Glossary.
Lean Product Development
Agile Methodology - A strategic approach, often used in software development, building products via a series of incremental development sprints. This approach helps teams respond to the inherent unpredictability of product development. (see The Ultimate Guide to Project Management Fundamentals to learn more)
Alpha Test - Controlled internal testing of a pre-production model, intended to detect design flaws or functionality deficiencies.
Beta Test - External pilot-test after Alpha testing is complete and prior to commercial production. In beta testing, the product is released to a limited number of customers for testing under normal, everyday conditions in order to detect any flaws. (see 10 Experiments To Test Your Startup Hypothesis)
Client/Customers - The person or group of people who are the direct beneficiary of a particular product or service. Idealy, these are the people for whom the product is designed.
Concierge Minimum Viable Product (CMVP) - A manual service simulating the same exact steps people would go through with a final product.
Constraints - Limitations outside the control of a project team. For example, date time-line limits, or finite resources.
Deliverable - A tangible outcome produced by a project. Internal deliverables are created by a project and are used by the company itself. External deliverables are created for clients, stakeholders, or customers. A single project can create many sets of deliverables.
Deployment - Introduction of a new activity, procedure, or program to an organization.
Dogfooding - A company showing confidence in their own product by using it themselves. Derived from the expression “eating your own dog food.”
Functional Requirements - Particular behavior or metric to judge the operation of a system.
Iteration - Each phase of agile development is referred to as an iteration. Iterations are short time frames granted to deliver sets of features. Each iteration generally contains activities such as analysis, design, development, and testing.
Milestone - A scheduled event to mark the completion of a major element of a product. Milestones are flags to signify that some amount of work has been completed.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP) - A low-cost prototype that measures if an idea attracts interest. (see 6 Steps to Building an MVP to learn more)
Mockup - A model of a design, device, or product. A mockup is considered to be a prototype if it possesses any degree of functionality and enables testing of a design.
Paper Prototype - A type of usability testing where a user performs realistic tasks by interacting with a manual, early-stage version of the interface that is often manipulated by an individual who is upholding the illusion of computer interactivity. During this process, the details of how the interface is supposed to be used are withheld from the user.
Piecemeal Minimum Viable Product (PMVP) - A functioning model of a product that takes advantage of existing tools and services in order to emulate the user experience process.
Production Environment - A term describing the setting where a product is put into use by customers on a regular basis.
Quality Assurance (QA) - The process of determining whether or not a product meets required specifications and customer expectations.
Release - A functional product sent to customers.
Requirements - Descriptions of the qualities, traits, abilities and specifications that a product ought to possess.
Roadmap - A strategic plan to create a product or complete a project. A roadmap describes the individual steps required to meet a set of goals or objectives. (see Startup Land: A Roadmap for Entrepreneurs for more info)
Sandbox - An environment or location where experimentation is acceptable, without consequences for failure.
Scrum - An iterative product development method, often introduced to manage software development projects. In scrum-based projects, the team is self-directed with no specified project manager and a high level of communication is maintained between team members. (see 5 Hacks for Non-Technical Founders)
Specifications - The exact customer needs that must be satisfied by a product in order for that product to be considered a success.
Sprint - A set time period during which milestones must be reached and work must be completed and ready for review.
Story Point - A measurement used by scrum teams to determine how much effort is required to achieve a goal.
Technical Requirements - A set of technical properties that a product must fulfill.
User Experience - The overall experience of an individual using a given product, often discussed in terms of the easiness or difficulties with this experience.
Version Control - The task of organizing a system or product containing many versions.
Waterfall Methodology - A product life cycle strategy including Analysis, Design, Development, Testing, and Deployment phases.
Wireframe - A representation of the virtual framework of a website. Wireframes allow people to easily arrange elements to optimize ease of use.
Wizard of Oz Minimum Viable Product (WoOMVP) - A version of a product that looks functional, but it actually operated by a human behind the scenes, granting the appearance of automation.
Interested to see what comes next? Click the button below to look at all ten sections of our Startup Glossary.
