Teams Glossary

Browse 66 teams terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

66 Teams Terms

Build Culture
The shared norms and habits around how a team builds software, including attitudes toward quality, speed, testing, release discipline, and ownership. Build...
Business Logic Culture
The shared assumptions and habits a team has about where business rules belong, how clearly they should be expressed, and who is responsible for maintaining...
Cat Herding
A phrase for trying to coordinate many independent people, systems, or moving parts that resist being lined up neatly. In engineering slang, cat herding often...
Code Complexity Culture
The way a team collectively tolerates, rewards, reduces, or ignores code complexity over time. The phrase is useful when messy systems are less about...
Code Culture
The shared norms, values, habits, and expectations a team has around writing, reviewing, maintaining, and talking about code. Code culture shapes quality...
Code Democracy
A joking term for making coding decisions by broad group opinion rather than by clear ownership or technical authority. In engineering slang, code democracy...
Code Ownership Culture
The norms a team has about who is responsible for code quality, changes, incidents, and long-term stewardship. Healthy code ownership culture balances...
Code Quality Culture
The shared habits and values a team has around maintaining high code quality through reviews, tests, cleanup, standards, and disciplined changes. Strong code...
Code Standards
Shared rules or expectations for how code should be formatted, structured, documented, and reviewed. Code standards help teams collaborate smoothly, though...
Code Style Culture
A team's collective habits and opinions around code style, such as formatting, naming, comments, and readability conventions. Strong code style culture can...
Coding Standards
Documented or agreed rules for writing code consistently across a team or organization. Coding standards help reduce friction and surprise, especially when...
Co-Founder
One of the original founders of a company, sharing responsibility for its early creation, ownership, and direction. The title carries both cultural weight and...
Cognitive Diversity
Diversity in how people think, solve problems, interpret risk, and approach decisions rather than only in visible demographics or role labels. In team culture...
Collaboration
Working together across people or groups toward a shared outcome through communication, coordination, and mutual adjustment. In tech organizations...
Collaboration Tool
Software used to help people coordinate, communicate, share documents, assign work, or work together in real time. In workplace culture collaboration tools...
Collective Code Ownership
A norm in which the whole team is empowered and expected to improve or fix any part of the codebase instead of treating modules as untouchable personal...
Co-Located Team
A team that works primarily from the same physical location rather than being distributed across regions or remote setups. In culture discussions co-located...
Communication
The exchange of information, intent, context, and decisions between people or groups. In tech organizations communication quality often determines whether good...
Consensus Decision
A decision reached through broad agreement rather than unilateral authority or simple majority vote. Consensus decisions can build trust and buy-in, though...
Cross-Functional Team
A team made up of people from different functions such as engineering, design, product, operations, and support working toward a shared outcome....
Cultural Fit
The degree to which a person seems compatible with a team's norms, working style, and values. In hiring culture the phrase is controversial because it can...
Daily Standup
A short recurring team meeting, usually daily, where people share progress, plans, and blockers. In tech culture daily standups are common but frequently...
Dependency Culture
The norms a team has around adding, managing, reviewing, and relying on dependencies, whether technical libraries or cross-team relationships. The term matters...
Design Culture
The way an organization or team thinks about design, including taste, process, critique, accessibility, craft, and how design is valued relative to other...
Development Practice
A recurring way of working in software development, such as code review, testing, estimation, pairing, or release discipline. In culture, development practices...
Dev Lead
A development lead or technical lead responsible for guiding implementation, prioritization, and technical direction for a team or project. The exact authority...
Diagram Culture
A culture in which diagrams are a primary way people explain systems, plan work, and align across teams. Diagram culture can improve shared understanding,...
Distributed Development
Software development carried out across multiple locations, time zones, or offices rather than in a single co-located environment. Distributed development...
Distributed Work
Work organized across different places, time zones, or locations rather than centered in one office. In culture discussions distributed work is broader than...
Diversity
The presence of meaningful difference within a group, whether in background, identity, experience, discipline, or perspective. In workplace culture diversity...
Documentation
Written material that explains systems, decisions, processes, or how to use something. In tech culture documentation is one of the clearest signals of whether...
Documentation First
An approach that emphasizes writing or updating documentation early, sometimes before implementation, so assumptions and interfaces are clarified before code...
Dream Team
A team imagined or described as exceptionally strong, complementary, and capable of producing great results together. In workplace culture the phrase can be...
Ego
A person's self-importance, pride, or identity investment, especially when it affects collaboration, feedback, or decision-making. In engineering culture ego...
Elastic Team
A team expected to expand, contract, or reconfigure quickly as priorities change. The phrase often suggests flexibility, though in practice it can hide...
Embedded Team
A team or person placed closely within another group or function so they can work with that group's needs directly rather than from a distant service model....
Emotional Intelligence
The ability to recognize, interpret, and manage emotions in yourself and others, especially in communication and conflict. In engineering culture emotional...
Empathy
The ability to understand and care about another person's perspective, constraints, or feelings. In product and workplace culture empathy matters both for...
Empowerment
Giving people the authority, information, trust, and support needed to make decisions and act effectively. In team culture empowerment matters only when...
Feature Team
A team organized around building and owning user-facing features rather than around a deeper technical platform layer. In organization design, feature teams...
Feedback Culture
The norms a team has around giving, receiving, and acting on feedback. Strong feedback culture makes honesty easier and less personal, while weak feedback...
Flight Rules
A set of practical operating rules for how to behave under pressure, often in incidents, launches, or complex workflows. The phrase evokes aviation-style...
Force Multiplier
Something or someone that increases the effectiveness of others rather than only contributing direct output. In engineering culture the phrase is often used...
Founding Team
The small group that started the company and shaped its earliest product, culture, and strategy. The strength and cohesion of the founding team often...
Friendly Fire
Damage caused accidentally by your own side, borrowed from military language and used metaphorically in tech for internal mistakes or cross-team harm. In...
Fun at Work
Enjoyment, playfulness, or social energy in the workplace beyond pure task execution. In healthy teams, fun at work comes from trust and shared momentum more...
Functional Organization
An organization structured by function, such as engineering, design, marketing, or operations, rather than by product line or cross-functional unit. In...
Game Night
A social event where people gather to play games, often used in communities or workplaces for bonding and informal interaction. In work culture game nights can...
Global Team
A team distributed across multiple countries, regions, or time zones rather than centered in one location. In workplace culture global teams require more...
Gossip Protocol Culture
A playful phrase for a culture where information spreads informally and redundantly through many side conversations rather than one authoritative channel....
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...
Hero Culture
A team culture that celebrates last-minute saves and exceptional individual effort more than durable systems and shared ownership. In engineering slang, hero...
Infrastructure Week
A dedicated period set aside for reliability, migrations, cleanup, and internal engineering improvements instead of product features.
Kanban Board Culture
A team habit of organizing and discussing work through visible flow boards, often emphasizing limits on work in progress and throughput over sprint...
Lame Duck Sprint
A sprint that has little real momentum because a release, reorg, holiday, or major decision has already made the iteration effectively provisional.
Minimum Viable Team
The smallest team structure that can realistically deliver and operate a product or project without collapsing under dependencies.
Mob
Short for mob programming or, more loosely, a whole group piling into the same coding or debugging session at once. It can be highly effective for shared...
Onboarding
The process of getting new employees, users, or contributors up to speed with the tools, context, permissions, workflows, and expectations they need to...
Ops
Short for operations, referring to the people and practices responsible for running, deploying, monitoring, and supporting systems in production. In...
Product Manager
The person responsible for helping define product direction, priorities, requirements, and tradeoffs across users, business goals, and engineering constraints....
Product Team
The group responsible for building and evolving the product, often including product managers, designers, engineers, and sometimes data or research roles. The...
Response Team
The group of people responsible for investigating, containing, coordinating, and helping recover from security incidents. Depending on the organization, the...
Retro Meeting
A retrospective meeting where a team reflects on what went well, what failed, and what to change next time.
Silo
An isolated team, system, or knowledge domain that does not communicate or integrate well with others. Silos create duplication, poor coordination, and brittle...
T-Shaped
Having broad ability across multiple areas plus deep expertise in one area, like the shape of a T. Teams value T-shaped people because they can collaborate...
Two Pizza Rule
A management heuristic that teams should stay small enough to be fed by two pizzas, used as shorthand for keeping groups lean.

Related Topics