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Incident management glossary

Unsure of the definition of something we've mentioned, or you've seen somewhere else? We've got you covered with our incident management (and adjacent domains!) glossary of terms:

Agile
An iterative and collaborative approach to project management and software development that emphasizes flexibility, responsiveness, and continuous improvement.
Alert
A notification or warning triggered by an event or condition, usually indicating a potential or actual incident.
Application Programming Interface (API)
A set of protocols and tools that enables different software applications to communicate with each other and share data.
Application Performance Management (APM)
The practice of monitoring, analyzing, and optimizing the performance and availability of software applications.
Architecture
The overall design and structure of a system or application, including its components, modules, and interfaces.
Artifact
Any product or output of the software development process, such as code, documentation, or test results.
Automated Testing
The use of software tools and scripts to automate the execution and evaluation of software tests, helping to improve efficiency, reliability, and consistency.
Availability
The degree to which a system or application is accessible and operational for users, usually measured as a percentage of uptime.
Backlog
A prioritized list of features, tasks, or bugs that need to be addressed in a software development project.
Baseline
A starting point or reference for measuring and comparing changes in a system or application, often used for performance, configuration, or compliance purposes.
Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)
An agile software development methodology that emphasizes collaboration and communication between developers, testers, and business stakeholders, using scenarios and examples to define and validate requirements.
Benchmarking
The process of comparing the performance, quality, or other characteristics of a system or application to industry standards or best practices.
Branch
A separate version of a software codebase that allows for independent development and testing of new features or changes.
Build
The process of compiling and packaging software code and other artifacts into a deployable format.
Business Continuity Planning (BCP)
The process of preparing and testing a set of procedures and resources to ensure that a business can continue to operate during and after a disruption or disaster.
Capacity Planning
The practice of predicting and managing the resources required for a system or application to meet its performance and scalability requirements.
Change Management
The process of planning, executing, and controlling changes to a system or application, usually involving formalized procedures and documentation to minimize risk and maintain compliance.
Code Review
A systematic process of evaluating and improving the quality, reliability, and security of software code, often involving peer review, automated tools, and testing.
Command-Line Interface (CLI)
A method of interacting with a software application or operating system through typed commands rather than graphical user interfaces.
Communication
The exchange of information and feedback between individuals, teams, and stakeholders, often critical for effective collaboration, decision-making, and incident management.
Compliance
The degree to which a system or application meets established standards, regulations, or policies, often relating to security, privacy, or data protection.
Configuration Management
The process of tracking and controlling changes to the settings, parameters, and other configuration data for a system or application.
Continuous Deployment (CD)
A software development practice that automates the release of code changes into a production environment, often as part of a continuous integration and delivery pipeline.
Continuous Delivery (CD)
A software development practice that emphasizes rapid and frequent delivery of small, incremental changes to a production environment, often enabled by automation and DevOps practices.
Continuous Integration (CI)
A software development practice that involves automatically building, testing, and integrating code changes on a frequent basis, often as part of a larger development and delivery process.
Continuous Improvement
An ongoing, incremental process of identifying areas for improvement and implementing changes to increase efficiency, productivity, and quality.
Control Chart
A graphical representation of process data that helps to monitor and control the variability and performance of a system or process.
Cost of Downtime
The financial impact of a system or application outage or disruption, including lost revenue, productivity, and customer satisfaction.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
A strategy and technology for managing and analyzing customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle, with the goal of improving customer retention and loyalty.
Dashboard
A visual representation of key metrics, data, or performance indicators for a system or application, often used to provide real-time status updates and insights.
Data Analysis
The process of inspecting, cleaning, transforming, and modeling data in order to derive insights and support decision-making.
Database Management System (DBMS)
A software application that manages the storage, retrieval, and modification of data in a structured database, using a set of tools and interfaces for users and applications.
Debugging
The process of identifying and fixing errors or defects in software code or applications, using a range of techniques and tools to locate and resolve issues.
Deployment
The process of delivering and installing software code and other artifacts into a production environment, often involving testing, quality assurance, and release management.
DevOps
An approach to software development and delivery that emphasizes collaboration, communication, automation, and continuous improvement between developers and IT operations teams.
Disaster Recovery (DR)
The process of restoring and recovering IT systems and infrastructure in the event of a disaster or outage, often involving planning, testing, and backup and recovery strategies.
Documentation
The process of creating, maintaining, and distributing written materials and resources, such as manuals, guides, and technical specifications, to support software development and operations.
Error Budget
A defined and measurable level of acceptable errors or disruptions in a system or application, often used to balance reliability and innovation goals.
Event Management
The process of monitoring, processing, and responding to system or application events, often involving automated tools and workflows to identify and prioritize incidents.
Fault Tolerance
The ability of a system or application to continue to operate in the event of hardware or software failures, often achieved through redundancy, backups, and other mitigation strategies.
Feedback Loop
A process in which information or data is continuously collected and used to adjust or improve a system or process, often used to optimize performance, quality, or customer experience.
Git
A distributed version control system used to manage software code and other files, allowing multiple developers to collaborate on a project and track changes over time.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
The process of defining and managing IT infrastructure and resources using code, allowing for automation, consistency, and reproducibility.
Incident
An unplanned interruption or degradation of service in a system or application, often resulting in service disruptions, outages, or other negative impacts.
Incident Response
The process of detecting, investigating, and resolving incidents in a system or application, often involving communication, collaboration, and mitigation strategies.
Infrastructure Monitoring
The process of continuously monitoring the health and performance of IT infrastructure and resources, often using automated tools and alerts to identify potential issues.
Integration
The process of combining different systems, applications, or components to work together seamlessly, often involving APIs, middleware, and other integration tools.
Interoperability
The ability of different systems, applications, or components to work together and exchange data, often achieved through standardization, protocols, and APIs.
ITIL
A framework of best practices for IT service management, focusing on processes, governance, and service delivery to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and customer satisfaction.
Jenkins
An open-source automation server used for building, testing, and deploying software code and other artifacts, often integrated with other DevOps tools and platforms.
Job Scheduling
The process of automating and managing the scheduling and execution of jobs or tasks, often using software tools and workflows to optimize performance and resource utilization.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Quantifiable measures used to evaluate the performance, effectiveness, and success of a system or process, often used to inform decision-making and continuous improvement.
Kubernetes
An open-source platform used to manage and orchestrate containerized applications, providing features such as scaling, load balancing, and deployment automation.
Lean
An approach to process improvement and management that emphasizes minimizing waste, optimizing efficiency, and improving quality, often used in manufacturing and software development.
Load Testing
The process of simulating and measuring the performance and scalability of a system or application under different levels of load or stress, often used to identify potential bottlenecks or issues.
Log Analysis
The process of analyzing and interpreting system or application logs to identify potential issues or patterns, often using automated tools and machine learning techniques.
Metrics
Quantifiable measures used to evaluate and monitor the performance, usage, or other aspects of a system or process, often used to inform decision-making and continuous improvement.
Microservices
An architectural approach to software development and delivery that emphasizes modular, loosely-coupled, and independently deployable components, often used in cloud and distributed systems.
Monitoring
The process of continuously observing and measuring the performance and health of a system or application, often using automated tools and alerts to identify potential issues or threats.
Network Security
The practice of protecting computer networks from unauthorized access or attacks, often involving measures such as firewalls, intrusion detection, and encryption.
Observability
The degree to which the internal state and behavior of a system or application can be inferred from external outputs, often achieved through logging, monitoring, and tracing.
On-call
A system or process for assigning responsibility for responding to incidents or problems outside of regular business hours, often involving a rotating schedule and escalation procedures.
Open Source
A development model for software in which the source code is made freely available and can be modified and distributed by anyone, often relying on a community of developers and contributors.
Operations
The set of activities and processes involved in managing and maintaining a system or application, including monitoring, performance tuning, deployment, and incident response.
Outage
An unplanned interruption or disruption of service in a system or application, often resulting in service disruptions, data loss, or other negative impacts.
PagerDuty
A cloud-based incident management platform that helps organizations manage and respond to incidents through automated alerts, on-call schedules, and collaboration tools.
Patch Management
The process of identifying, testing, and deploying software patches or updates to address security vulnerabilities, bugs, or other issues in a system or application.
Performance Engineering
The process of designing, testing, and optimizing a system or application for maximum performance, often involving analysis of system architecture, bottlenecks, and scalability.
Performance Testing
The process of measuring and evaluating the performance of a system or application under different loads or conditions, often involving automated tools and testing frameworks.
Pipeline
A set of automated processes and tools used to manage and deploy software code and other artifacts, often including version control, continuous integration, and continuous delivery.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
A cloud computing service model in which a provider offers a platform for building, testing, and deploying software applications, often including infrastructure, tools, and runtime environments.
Post-Incident Review
A process for evaluating and analyzing the causes and effects of an incident or outage, often involving collaboration, documentation, and recommendations for improvement.
Problem Management
The process of identifying and resolving underlying causes of incidents or problems in a system or application, often involving root cause analysis, trend analysis, and process improvement.
Process Automation
The use of technology to automate and streamline manual or repetitive tasks or processes, often involving tools such as scripting, workflow, and orchestration.
Production Environment
The environment in which a system or application is deployed and used by end-users or customers, often requiring higher levels of security, performance, and reliability.
Production Environment
The environment in which a system or application is deployed and used by end-users or customers, often requiring higher levels of security, performance, and reliability.
Project Management
The process of planning, organizing, and managing resources to achieve specific goals or objectives, often involving project planning, scheduling, and risk management.
Quality Assurance (QA)
The process of ensuring that a system or application meets or exceeds specified quality standards, often involving testing, code review, and other quality control measures.
Ransomware
Malware that encrypts a victim's files or data and demands payment in exchange for the decryption key, often used for extortion or financial gain.
Ransomware
Malware that restricts access to a victim's system or files and demands a ransom to be paid to regain access.
Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
The targeted duration of time between a disaster and the resumption of normal operations, measured in time units such as hours or days.
Release Management
The process of planning, scheduling, coordinating, and deploying new software releases to a production environment.
Reliability Engineering
The practice of designing and implementing systems to be reliable, maintainable, and scalable.
Remediation
The process of resolving and fixing issues or vulnerabilities identified through incident management or other processes.
Resilience
The ability of a system or organization to adapt to changing circumstances, maintain its functions, and recover quickly from disruptions or disasters.
Risk Management
The process of identifying, assessing, and prioritizing risks, and developing strategies to mitigate, transfer, or accept them.
Root Cause Analysis (RCA)
A process of analyzing a problem or incident to identify the underlying root cause or causes, and developing strategies to prevent recurrence.
Scrum
An agile project management framework for iterative and incremental development of software products.
Security
The protection of systems, applications, and data from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction.
Service Level Agreement (SLA)
A contract between a service provider and a customer that defines the expected level of service, performance, and availability.
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)
A software engineering approach to operations that emphasizes automation, monitoring, and fault tolerance.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
A software delivery model in which applications are hosted by a service provider and accessed by customers over the internet.
Source Code
The human-readable instructions that make up a software application.
Sprint
A time-boxed period in which a development team works on a set of user stories or backlog items.
Stateful
A system or application that stores data about previous events or interactions.
State Machine
A mathematical model used to describe the behavior of a system or application that can be in one of a finite number of states at any given time.
Statelessness
A system or application that does not store any data about previous events or interactions.
Stress Testing
A type of performance testing that evaluates how well a system or application can handle heavy loads or unexpected conditions.