
This glossary not only includes technical or industry jargon many use in the software industry, but also includes vocabulary (buzzwords, corporate speak, etc.) used in professional, office settings that may or may be recognized outside of the software or IT realm as well.
The purpose of this glossary is to try to define the technical terms in English that can be understood by anyone. If you have ideas to help me fill in the blanks for the words not yet defined or to update the definitions of words already defined, contact us through our contact page to share your insights. If your business website/blog has definitions we can use here, we are happy to quote your resource and link back (we also hope for a link back to this post or another post on this blog).
Let's get started!
Meanings of Software Developers Use
A Dictionary For the Rest of Us!
Action/Actionable
Adherence
Agile
Agile Manifesto
ASAP: Short form of “as soon as possible.”
Avail: (short for available) free at the moment
Average handling time
AWOL: May be used in a meeting to inform the rest of the attendees someone is absent. (MIA is another similar term.) These terms derive from military culture, but are often used in corporate speak as well.
Backlog: tasks not yet done by the team for the duration of a project, during a sprint, during a release (it’s like a to-do list of things that need to be done – features, bugs, etc.) May also be known as a PBI or a Product Backlog
Bandwidth: time and/or energy to help out or get involved (synonym: cycles) Sample question: Do you have the bandwidth?
Batch
Billable
Billable staff
Billed hours
Bio break: A euphemism for stating one has to go to the toilet or use the restroom.
Bottlenecks
BRB: Short form of “be right back.” Frequently used in chat conversations. However, note in more formal business chats, short forms should be avoided.
BSOD: The Blue Screen of Death
Burn down/burn down chart
Buy in: Get someone to agree to something
C: A programming language
Cascade: pass it down, share with others
CSS: Cascading Style Sheet
Cloud enabled
Cloud native: A digital product that is created and maintained in the cloud. No servers are needed for cloud native apps or software.
Concall: Short way to write or say “conference call.”
Constant
Core competency
Crack team: a team of experts who ‘spearheaded’ a transition through to ‘pilot’
Creative Interface: It is the creative user interface design which is the graphical layout of an application.
Cron: a job scheduled to run at a specified time
Cross-functional team
Deadline
Debug
Deck: A PowerPoint (PPT) slide deck
Deep dive
Delivery
Demo: As elements of the software are completed and are functional, the developers demonstrate the functionalities of what has been completed so far (also may be called ‘sprint demo’)
Dependence
Deployment
Deprecate
DevOps - the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organization's ability to deliver applications (faster time to market) and services at high velocity: evolving and improving products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional software development and infrastructure management processes. (The development and production environments would be identical.)
Development Environment: the developer’s workstation (which may or may not be the final target environment – which could be a mobile device, embedded system, data center, etc.). Some call this the ‘sandbox.’
Digital Design
Drill down
Due diligence
EOD: Short form of End of Day or End of Business Day (EOB).
End users/users: end users are the actual people using the app or website. The end users will be referred to by different terms based on the business: college (students), store (customers), consulting (clients), hotels (guests), etc.
Estimates
Feature
Fire fighting
Functional specification: “A functional specification is a formal document used to describe a product's intended capabilities, appearance, and interactions with users in detail for software developers. The functional specification is a kind of guideline and continuing reference point as the developers write the programming code.” From TechTarget Network
Functions/functionality
Go live
Hard copy/soft copy
Heads up
Holistic
Impediments: See "road blocks"
Iteration
Issue resolution: outcome of the problem and/or the process of how a problem needs to be resolve
Kernel
Logged in hours
Login time
Loop
Low hanging fruit: something completed or obtained with little to no effort
Migration
Milestone
Non-billable
Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA)
Offshore
See more: Terminology of Outsourcing & Outsourcing FAQ
Online
Onprem: On premises – hosted onsite vs the cloud
Onsite
OOO: out of office
Pilot
Ping: A full description of the meaning of "ping" and "ping me" is here.
Pragmatic
Probing
Product Owner
Production Environment: This is the actual live version of the app or website that the end users (customers, clients, students, general public) can access. It is in the production environment where features ‘go live.’
Production Issue: When client or actual user use the system and find a problem
QA: Quality control/testing
Rebuttals
Recovery work
Red flag: A warning about something
Regroup: meet again later How to use it in a sentence: We are running out of time today, let’s regroup tomorrow at the same time.


Script
Service Level Agreement
Shell
Showstopper
Snapshot
Sprint: Used in a question: Will there be any spill over after this sprint?
Spill over: Spill over are the stories which did not meet the criteria of the current sprint.
Stories/User Stories
Scrum
Scrum Ceremonies: the series of “meetings” that constitute a sprint- Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum (aka daily stand up), Sprint Review (aka iteration review), Sprint Retrospective (Also known as “scrum events.”)
I’ve also seen them termed as sprint ceremonies or agile ceremonies. The word ‘events’ can be used in place of ‘ceremonies’ (scrum events, agile events, sprint events).
SDLC: This acronym seems much more common than the expansion, below. It refers to the methodology or process chosen by a team or company in executing a software development project. The most common types are agile and waterfall, which can sometimes be combined, though there are conflicting viewpoints about this. A few other SLDC approaches are: DevOps, iterative model, V shaped model, big bang model, spiral model Long form: Software Development Life Cycle
Server
Shippable product
Stand up meeting/daily stand up meeting
SOP
Sprint: the shortest amount of time to achieve tasks in a backlog (a way of time and task management in the agile methodology)
Staging/Staging Environment: A staging environment is a clone of your deliverable/shippable in a semi-private environment. It’s a clone of the real thing, but not ‘live.’ So, for example, for a website, it could be “staged” on a URL that is not available to the public. Staging helps the team and stakeholders interact with the product in a simulated environment to identify the usability, bugs, interactivity and other functionalities of the site before it is made public. In this stage, unlike the development stage (where the code is on a local machine), the code will be on a server or in the cloud (if it is cloud native).
Sunset - And if you are getting rid of an application you are “sunsetting it”.

Technical Debt: the process of prioritizing speedy delivery over perfect code. Technical debt may be more relevant to agile development than waterfall development. Also known as: tech debt or code debt
Test cases
Test reports
Time sheet
Time to market
Traction
True/False
UI Long form: user interface
Upgrade
Upscale: increasing size/scope of operations or improving the quality of a service or product
Use Case:
User interface
Variant
Wireframes
Work around