Tauseef FayyazA to Z
Glossary
Every concept in this sheet, plus the smaller terms it uses. Select a concept to open its card.
A
- Agile, sprints and tickets
- A way of working in short cycles, often one or two week sprints, with work broken into tickets on a board and planned from a backlog.
- API
- A defined way for one piece of software to ask another for data or actions, usually as HTTP requests to endpoints that return JSON.
B
- Basic SQL
- The language for asking questions of relational databases: select columns, filter rows, group and count, join tables.
- Business analyst
- A role that turns business needs into clear requirements, process maps and acceptance criteria, common in services companies, banks and enterprise IT.
C
- Client, server and the web
- A client such as a browser or mobile app sends requests over the internet to a server, which runs code, reads a database and sends back a response.
- Customer success
- Roles that help existing customers get value from a product after they buy it, from onboarding to troubleshooting and renewals.
D
- Developer relations
- The work of helping external developers succeed with a product through content, talks, sample code, community and feedback to the product team.
E
- Environments, releases and incidents
- Code moves from development to staging to production; feature flags turn features on for some users; incidents are unplanned outages handled urgently.
G
- Git and pull requests
- Git tracks changes to files; a pull request proposes a change, shows the difference and lets others review and discuss it before it is merged.
H
- HTTP methods and status codes
- HTTP requests use methods such as GET to read and POST to create, and responses carry status codes: 2xx success, 4xx client errors, 5xx server errors.
J
- JSON
- A text format for structured data made of objects in braces, arrays in brackets, strings, numbers, booleans and null.
N
- Non-coding tech role
- A job inside a software team where writing production code is not the main output, but understanding how software is built is still required.
P
- Product manager
- The person responsible for deciding what a team builds and why: understanding users and the business, choosing problems worth solving and defining success.
- Project manager
- A role focused on delivering agreed work on time: planning, tracking dependencies, risks and communication.
R
- Reading code without writing much
- Following what code does by reading names, function signatures, comments, tests and pull request descriptions, and asking targeted questions.
S
- Software development lifecycle
- The stages software goes through: discovering the need, designing, building, reviewing, testing, releasing, operating and improving it.
- Solutions engineer
- A technical role that helps customers evaluate and adopt a product: demos, proofs of concept, answering technical questions during a sale.
T
- Technical writer
- Someone who creates and maintains documentation such as guides, tutorials, API references and release notes so users and developers can succeed with a product.
- Testing role fit cheaply
- Trying small real tasks from a role before committing to it, such as writing a how-to guide, running two user interviews or giving a short talk.