📂Product Areas

Product Areas help you segment your product into clear, non-overlapping buckets—so squads or teams can own what matters most to them (e.g. Billing, User Management, Integrations, API... you name it).

Think of each area as a mini-product within your full product. Together, they form a MECE (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) view: no gaps, no overlaps.

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Setting them up

Give each area a name and a clear description. Every quote will be linked to a single, specific product area. It’s your taxonomy, not ours. If your team uses a different naming convention, you can rename the "Product Area" and “Product Category” labels to match your naming.

Product Categories let you group multiple Product Areas under a shared umbrella—typically aligned to teams or squads (e.g. Platform, Customer Experience).

If your team uses different names, feel free to rename “Product Area” and “Product Category” labels to whatever matches your team’s real language. The goal is for every area to feel native and familiar to your crew.

Here are some of the most-used templates 👇

• Crew → Product Area (for orgs using squads)

• Product → Product Area (for orgs organized by product line)

• Domain → Product Area (for orgs organized by expertise: e.g., “Payments” → “Card Processing”)

Don't forget to add descriptions to your Product Areas

Best Practices for Defining Product Areas

• Use team-native titles: Name each area after what your squad/team actually calls itself. (“Claims Processing Crew,” not a generic/abbreviated label. If using a short name, add the full name as a keyword.)

• MECE structure: Make sure Product Areas are Mutually Exclusive (no overlap/confusion) and Collectively Exhaustive (every piece of feedback fits somewhere).

  If there’s confusion, clarify in the area’s description. Example: “Billing handles invoices; Payments covers transaction processing.”

• One-sentence scope statement: For every area, add a one-liner: what does this team own, and why?

  (E.g. “The Claims Processing Crew manages the end-to-end workflow for all claims intake and payout.”)

• 3–5 keywords: List synonyms, acronyms, and real phrases your users or customers use to describe this area. (E.g. “Claims, reimbursement, settlement, adjuster” for Claims Processing.)

• Keep it concise: Keep each area’s description under 100 words so AI and teammates get it at a glance.

• Iterate based on data: After launch, check for mis-triaged feedback. If the wrong feedback is getting routed, update titles, descriptions, or keywords—don’t set it and forget it.

How Product Area Tagging Works in Cycle

Here’s a simple step-by-step of how Cycle routes feedback to the right product area:

1. Feedback-level tagging:

   We start by tagging the whole feedback (the full text) with every product area it might relate to. → These are just “potential” areas, clues for where to dig deeper.

2. Quote extraction & assignment:

   Our AI chops the feedback into “quotes” (sentences or snippets). For each quote, it picks one product area from the pool identified in step 1.

   → By design, each quote ends up in exactly one area, even if the feedback itself touched several.

Need help defining your Product Areas? Don't worry we've got you covered! Check out this Custom GPT that will guide you through the whole process 🚀