Jargon and Terminology

Cards · 60

Bandwidth

Business / Tech: A person's or team's mental capacity, time, or resources available to handle additional tasks.

Circle back

Corporate / Business: To follow up, discuss, or revisit a topic at a later date or time.

Touch base

Corporate / Business: To make brief contact with someone to provide or receive a status update.

Low-hanging fruit

Business / Management: The simplest, most easily achieved tasks, goals, or targets that yield quick results.

Synergy

Corporate / Management: The combined effect of two or more entities working together that is greater than their individual sum.

Deliverable

Project Management: A tangible or intangible product, result, or service that must be provided upon project completion.

Action item

Project Management: A specific, documented task or action that needs to be taken by an assigned person.

Boil the ocean

Business / Consulting: To waste effort by attempting an impossibly large, overcomplicated, or unnecessary task.

Move the needle

Business / Marketing: To generate a noticeable, measurable progress or significant positive change.

Pivot

Startups / Business: To fundamentally shift business strategy, direction, or product focus to adapt to market needs.

Runway

Startups / Finance: The amount of time a company can continue operating before running out of money, based on current cash reserves.

Burn rate

Finance / Startups: The pace at which a company spends its cash reserves before generating positive cash flow.

KPI (Key Performance Indicator)

Business / Analytics: A quantifiable measure used to evaluate success in meeting vital operational or strategic goals.

ROI (Return on Investment)

Finance / Business: A profitability ratio evaluating the efficiency or return generated by an investment relative to its cost.

EBITDA

Finance / Accounting: Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization; a measure of core operational profitability.

Due diligence

Law / Finance: An exhaustive appraisal or audit of a business, asset, or person conducted before signing a contract.

Deep dive

Corporate / Consulting: An in-depth, comprehensive analysis or detailed discussion of a single specific subject.

Silo

Corporate / Management: A department, team, or system that operates in isolation and refuses to share information.

Table this

Corporate: To postpone discussion of a topic or issue until a future meeting or unspecified date.

Bake-off

Business / Procurement: A competitive pitch presentation where multiple vendors or agencies vie for a client contract.

Sprint

Software / Agile: A set, short period (often 1-4 weeks) during which specific product work must be completed and reviewed.

Scrum

Software / Agile: A lightweight project framework emphasizing collaboration, daily stand-ups, and iterative delivery.

Technical debt

Software Development: The implied future cost of rework caused by choosing an easy, fast solution now instead of a proper one.

Refactoring

Software Engineering: Restructuring existing computer code to improve internal design and readability without changing its external behavior.

Dogfooding

Tech / Product Management: A company's practice of having its own employees use its newly built products internally to test them.

Sunset

Tech / Product: To intentionally phase out, retire, or discontinue a product, feature, or service.

Deprecate

Software / Tech: To mark a software feature or API as obsolete, discouraging its use before permanent removal.

Churn rate

SaaS / Subscription Business: The percentage of customers or subscribers who stop using or paying for a service over a given period.

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)

Sales / Marketing: The total sales and marketing spend divided by the number of new customers gained in that period.

LTV (Lifetime Value)

Sales / Marketing: The total estimated net profit or revenue a business expects to earn from a single customer over their relationship.

A/B testing

Marketing / Product: An experiment where two variants of a webpage or feature are compared head-to-head to see which performs better.

Conversion rate

E-Commerce / Marketing: The percentage of visitors or leads who complete a desired target action, like making a purchase.

Top of the funnel

Sales / Marketing: The earliest stage of the buyer journey, focused on broad brand awareness rather than immediate purchasing.

Scope creep

Project Management: The continuous, uncontrolled growth or changes in a project's requirements without adjustments to time or budget.

Pain point

Sales / UX Design: A specific, persistent problem or frustration experienced by prospective or current customers.

Onboarding

HR / Product: The process of integrating a new employee into an organization, or guiding a user through an unfamiliar application.

Pip (Performance Improvement Plan)

Human Resources: A formal structured plan giving an underperforming employee a deadline to meet specified work targets.

Headcount

Human Resources / Finance: The total number of individual employees working within an organization or department.

Attrition

Human Resources: The gradual reduction of a workforce through natural departures like resignations, retirements, or death.

Boilerplate

Legal / Writing: Standardized, generic text or clauses copied into contracts, documents, or code with little modification.

Indemnity

Law / Insurance: A contractual agreement where one party promises to compensate another for specified future losses or damages.

Redlining

Law / Contracts: The process of editing a draft contract where additions and deletions are highlighted in color for review.

Force majeure

Law / Contracts: A contractual clause freeing both parties from liability during unforeseeable, unavoidable catastrophes like wars or floods.

N.P.O. (Nil per os)

Medicine / Healthcare: A medical instruction meaning 'nothing by mouth', forbidding a patient from eating or drinking fluids.

Stat

Medicine / Healthcare: A directive derived from 'statim' indicating that a medical order or test must be carried out immediately.

Triage

Medicine / Emergency Response: The process of sorting and prioritizing patients based on the severity of their medical needs.

Contraindication

Medicine / Pharmacology: A specific condition or symptom that makes a particular treatment, drug, or procedure inadvisable or harmful.

Arbitrage

Finance / Trading: Simultaneously buying an asset in one market and selling it in another to profit from price differences.

Liquidity

Finance / Banking: The ease and speed with which an asset or investment can be converted directly into cash without losing value.

Hedging

Finance / Investment: An investment position taken deliberately to offset potential losses or mitigate risks in another position.

Blue chip

Finance / Stock Market: A nationally recognized, well-established, and financially sound company known for reliable performance.

Stagflation

Economics: An abnormal economic condition featuring slow economic growth, high unemployment, and rapidly rising inflation.

Bespoke

Fashion / Manufacturing: Made custom to individual customer specifications rather than produced as mass off-the-shelf goods.

Loss leader

Retail / Pricing: A product sold at a financial loss designed deliberately to attract customers into a store to buy other goods.

Hero image

Web Design: A prominent, eye-catching banner graphic or photo positioned prominently at the very top of a webpage.

Bleed

Printing / Graphic Design: Artwork or background color printed past the edge of the sheet so no unprinted margins show after trimming.

Kerning

Typography / Graphic Design: The manual or automated adjustment of spacing between two individual adjacent typographic characters.

B-roll

Film / Video Production: Supplemental or alternative video footage intercut with the primary footage or main interview.

Cold call

Sales: Contacting a potential customer by phone or in person without any prior relationship, notice, or scheduled appointment.

Evergreen content

Media / Digital Marketing: Search-optimized content that remains relevant, fresh, and valuable to readers over a long period.