Process Glossary

Browse 50 process terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

50 Process Terms

Agile
Agile is a set of principles and practices for software development that emphasizes iterative delivery, collaboration, flexibility, and responding to change...
Blameless Postmortem
A structured review conducted after an incident that focuses on understanding systemic causes and improving processes, explicitly avoiding individual blame —...
Blameless Retrospective
A post-incident review focused on understanding systemic failures rather than assigning blame to individuals. Participants describe what happened, what they...
Code Freeze
A period during which no new code changes are merged to the release branch — only critical bug fixes are allowed. Common before major releases, during holiday...
Code Ritual
A repeated engineering behavior that may have started for good reasons but is now followed more from habit than fresh understanding. In engineering slang, code...
Continuous Improvement
The practice of making steady incremental improvements to systems, workflows, and team habits over time rather than waiting for massive overhauls. In healthy...
Definition of Done
A shared, explicit checklist of criteria that must be met before a work item is considered complete. Typically includes: code reviewed, tests passing,...
Dockerize
To package an application and its dependencies into a Docker container. 'Can you Dockerize the service by end of day?' has replaced 'can you write deployment...
Documentation First
An approach that emphasizes writing or updating documentation early, sometimes before implementation, so assumptions and interfaces are clarified before code...
Due Diligence
The comprehensive investigation an investor performs before committing capital — examining financials, technology, team, market, legal liabilities, and...
Email Driven Development
A mocking term for engineering work steered primarily by email threads, escalation chains, and inbox noise rather than by clear planning or direct product...
ETL
Extract, Transform, Load — the three steps of moving data between systems. Extract from sources, transform into the desired format, load into the destination....
Exit Code
A numeric value returned by a process to its parent when it terminates. By convention, 0 means success and any non-zero value indicates an error. Shell scripts...
Five Whys
A root cause analysis technique where you ask 'why?' five times to drill down from a symptom to its underlying cause. Why did the server crash? Memory leak....
Five Whys
A root cause analysis technique where you ask 'why?' five times to drill past symptoms to underlying causes. Originally from Toyota's production system. Works...
Guardrail Culture
A culture that relies on clear boundaries and safeguards to keep people and systems safe without requiring perfect judgment every time. Guardrail culture is...
Heavyweight
Describing a tool, framework, process, or system that is large, complex, or resource-intensive relative to the problem at hand. It is often used critically...
Incident Commander
The person who coordinates the response during a production incident -- making decisions, assigning tasks, managing communication, and keeping the response...
Incident Lifecycle
The full sequence of stages a security incident moves through, typically including preparation, detection, analysis, containment, eradication, recovery, and...
Incident Playbook
Incident Playbook is a predefined response procedure that outlines steps, roles, communications, and escalation during a security event. Security teams use it...
Incident Response
The organized approach to addressing and managing a security breach or cyberattack, covering preparation, identification, containment, eradication, recovery,...
Kaizen Tech
Applying continuous small improvements to software work, tooling, and team process rather than relying only on big resets.
On-Call Rotation
A schedule where team members take turns being the primary responder for production incidents outside business hours. Good rotations include clear escalation...
Overhead
The additional cost, time, or complexity required to support an operation beyond the core work itself. Overhead can be technical, organizational, or...
Postmortem
A written analysis conducted after a production incident, documenting what happened, why, how it was resolved, and what will be done to prevent recurrence....
Reasoning Step
An individual step within a larger reasoning process or chain of inference. Teams talk about reasoning steps when analyzing how an AI system reached a...
Release Checklist
A documented sequence of tasks required to ship a release, such as verifying tests, updating changelogs, tagging versions, checking signatures, and...
Release Management
The discipline of planning, scheduling, coordinating, and governing the delivery of software releases — encompassing version numbering, changelog generation,...
Release Train
A release management strategy where new versions ship on a fixed schedule (e.g., every 6 weeks) regardless of which features are ready. Features that aren't...
Request for Comments
A document format or process used to propose ideas, standards, protocols, or major project changes for review and discussion before adoption. Often abbreviated...
Retro Meeting
A retrospective meeting where a team reflects on what went well, what failed, and what to change next time.
Retrospective
A recurring team meeting at the end of an iteration or project where participants reflect on what went well, what went wrong, and what to improve in the next...
RFC Process
A structured process for proposing and discussing significant changes to a project. Authors write a detailed proposal (motivation, detailed design,...
RFC Slang
A casual use of 'RFC' to mean any proposal document or written design discussion, even when it is not a formal request for comments process. It reflects how...
Root Cause Analysis
Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a systematic process for identifying the fundamental underlying cause of a problem rather than just addressing its symptoms. In...
Rubber Stamp
Rubber Stamp in software development describes a code review practice where a reviewer approves changes without carefully examining them. The reviewer may...
Rubber Stamping
Approving a code review without actually reading the changes — hitting 'approve' based on trust, laziness, or social pressure rather than genuine assessment....
Running in Circles
Repeatedly taking action without making real progress, usually because the team lacks clarity, ownership, or a stable approach. It often describes debugging,...
Sales Playbook
A documented set of guidance on how the sales team should prospect, qualify, position, handle objections, and progress deals. Strong playbooks improve...
SIGKILL
Unix signal 9 — the unblockable, uncatchable signal that immediately terminates a process. When SIGTERM (the polite request to stop) is ignored, SIGKILL is the...
Software Engineering
The disciplined application of engineering principles to the design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance of software systems — emphasizing...
Spaghettification
The process by which clean, well-structured code gradually becomes spaghetti code through accumulated shortcuts, hotfixes, and feature additions without...
Stage Gate
A decision checkpoint that work must pass before moving from one phase to the next, often used in product development, procurement, or governance-heavy...
Technical Specification
A document written before implementation that describes the problem, proposed solution, architecture, API contracts, data models, alternatives considered, and...
Threat Model
A structured analysis of what you're protecting, who might attack it, how they'd do it, and what's most likely to go wrong — ideally performed before you write...
Threat Modeling
A structured process for identifying security threats, attack vectors, and mitigations during the design phase — before code is written. Common frameworks:...
Trust the Process
A reminder to stick with a method that may feel slow or frustrating in the short term because it tends to produce better outcomes. In engineering slang, the...
Waterfall Culture
A workplace pattern shaped by sequential planning, handoffs, up-front requirements, and late-stage testing, often associated with traditional waterfall project...
Waterfall Hangover
The lingering habits of heavy sequential planning and gatekeeping that remain even after a team claims to have become agile.
Zombie Process Culture
A workplace state where rituals, approvals, or processes continue long after they have lost their purpose or value.

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