[juve1996]

> A product manager really should know and understand this, because it's not like it's impenetrable tech jargon.

It's not tech jargon but it's a medical term, that has to do with people possibly dying or wounded soldiers that can't be handled, and now we're using it in tech? Ignoring the ridiculous overexaggerating that is, this is exactly the kind of jargon that techies will get mad at managers for using.

Just say what you want. "We have other priorities, how does this fit with those, and what item will have lower priority now?"

[_djo_]

Except that the semantic shift of triage to also meaning any under pressure prioritisation of too-scarce resources, including in a project sense, is decades-old and predates its usage in tech. This is a case of tech adopting business jargon, not the other way around.

Even if the product manager wasn't familiar with the term itself, they'd surely be familiar with the idea of prioritising incoming tasks by importance and value and moving out work with lower scores. A simple question should've allowed them to link the word and the concept in their heads. This is unlike true tech jargon, where both the word itself and the underlying concept might be completely unfamiliar to anyone outside of tech and difficult to understand.

You shouldn't have to explain prioritisation to a product manager.