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Product Management vocabulary · Team & Stakeholder Communication

Push back

Meaning in product management, with examples

phrasal verbCore term

In product management, push back means: To disagree with or resist a request, decision or deadline, usually politely and with reasons; also, to move a date to later.

In Turkish: itiraz etmek, karşı çıkmak, ertelemek

How it is used

Saying no is part of a PM's job, so push back on is heard daily: push back on a request, push back on scope. The noun is pushback: we got some pushback from sales. In the second meaning: the launch was pushed back to May.

Example sentences

  1. I pushed back on the request because it would delay the security work.

  2. The launch was pushed back by two weeks after the beta results.

Common collocations

  • push back on a request
  • get pushback
  • push back on scope
  • push back the deadline
  • trade-offA situation in which getting more of one thing means accepting less of another, such as releasing faster but with fewer features.
  • stakeholderAny person or group inside or outside the company who is affected by a product decision or can influence it, such as executives, sales, support or legal.
  • prioritizeTo decide which work is most important and should be done first, and therefore which work will wait or will not be done at all.
  • escalateTo take a problem or disagreement to a more senior person because it cannot be solved at the current level or is becoming urgent.
  • scope creepThe slow, uncontrolled growth of a feature or project as extra requirements are added after work has started, usually without changing the deadline.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Team & Stakeholder Communication

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