Decoding Product Manager Jargon: Essential Terms Every Designer Should Know

Core Tip Product managers often use terms that designers find confusing; this guide clarifies those frequently heard phrases.

PD vs. PM

PD (Product Director) is a product manager, while PM (Project Manager) is a project manager; both are managers but focus on different responsibilities.

Product managers handle product operation and strategy, whereas project managers manage resources, timelines, and execution.

Blue Ocean vs. Red Ocean

A blue‑ocean market is an untapped space with little competition, offering a temporary monopoly if entered successfully.

A red‑ocean market is mature and highly competitive, requiring distinct advantages or strong brand reputation to succeed.

C2C

C2C can mean "Customer to Customer," describing platforms like Taobao that connect buyers and sellers, or "Copy to China," referring to copying existing ideas, which is not inherently unethical if it respects intellectual property.

Entry Barriers

Entry barriers are the difficulties of entering a market, determined by technology, cost, resource ownership, and competitor strength.

Business Value

Business value encompasses monetary profit as well as social and other forms of value created by a product or organization.

Industry Classification

Traditional sectors are agriculture, industry, and services; a newer model adds "experience economy" where revenue comes from charging for time spent with a product.

Platform Products

Platform products leverage their resources to attract and enable other products, becoming a company’s foundation (e.g., QQ, Baidu, Google, Microsoft).

Cash‑Cow Products

Cash‑cow products generate high profit margins and contribute a large share of a company’s total profit, such as World of Warcraft for its publisher.

Funding Process

Typical financing stages for an internet startup: angel investment (10% for $100k), Series A (20% for $1M), Series B (30% for $10M), and IPO (large public offering).

PDD (Product Design Document)

PDD documents the product’s lifecycle, aligning product, development, and leadership teams. It includes website architecture maps, wireframes/mockups, and page description tables, following the MECE principle.

CRUD

CRUD stands for Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete—the four basic operations in database‑driven applications.

User‑Task Loop

A closed loop of steps that helps users complete a task, accounting for possible variations.

Murphy’s Law in Internet

Anything that can go wrong (spam, script injection, bots, etc.) will eventually happen, and single‑person dependencies often become bottlenecks.

Website Packaging

A good website package combines logo, slogan, and benefit statement so users instantly understand the site’s purpose.

Chinese‑Style Complexity

Overly complex designs are sometimes used to appear more professional to users with varying education levels, but simplicity (Occam’s razor) is generally more effective.

Eliminating Numbers

Displaying fewer numbers (e.g., "100+" instead of exact counts) reduces user anxiety and encourages interaction.

PDCA

Plan‑Do‑Check‑Act is a continuous improvement framework for product development.

CE (Customer Engagement)

CE involves actively involving users through feedback channels, community groups, behavior tracking, and churn analysis to improve the product.

KPI

Key Performance Indicators evaluate performance against SMART criteria (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time‑based).

Closed Experience

A closed experience occurs when combining two products creates added value beyond using them separately, influencing conversion rates.

MVP

In product management, MVP means Minimum Viable Product—a low‑cost version that validates core concepts and gathers user feedback.