Originally written in French. Translated by AI — the meaning has been preserved, not the prose.
Short definition
A document produced to circulate or stabilize information inside an organization — minutes, a specification, a reworded ticket, a tracking table, an intelligence summary — and none of whose recipients is a customer.
Full definition
The word "artifact" comes from the vocabulary of agile methods, where it designates any object produced by a process: backlog, increment, burndown. It is neutral there and covers what goes out to the market as much as what stays inside.
In the articles on this blog, the phrase serves to isolate the second category: what is manufactured and maintained solely so that one person's work becomes usable by others. Two traits characterize it — it goes stale fast, and its maintenance is recurring. Interview minutes, a specification kept up to date, an intelligence table filed by competitor are its typical forms in a Product Manager's work.
The phrase is not disparaging in itself: an intermediate artifact can be indispensable. It names a position in the chain, not a value.
Usage in the field
The term serves to divide the work of an interface role into two parts — what is produced for the outside and what is produced for internal circulation — and to discuss what can be tooled without loss.
Synonyms and variants
"Intermediate material", "operational layer", "plumbing" — the last being the vivid and loaded usage for the same thing.
Not to be confused with
- Deliverable — Deliverable — a production shaped for an outside recipient, on a date, under a constraint of format; the intermediate artifact has no recipient outside the organization.
- Note — a neutral unit of knowledge, written to be reused in several outputs; it is made to last, where the intermediate artifact goes stale as the subject advances.
- Source — untransformed raw material, an interview or an original document; the intermediate artifact is already a product of processing.
Examples
"Gathering needs, rewording, producing documents, clarifying tickets, tidying up, coordinating" — the list of gestures that produce and maintain these artifacts.
"The Product Manager is no longer condemned to spend most of their time producing or maintaining intermediate artifacts."
Ambiguities / debates
The border with the deliverable depends on the recipient, not the content: an internal specification becomes a deliverable as soon as it is sent to a contractor. The same document therefore changes category depending on the route, which makes the classification unstable in very open organizations.