The Five Pillars of Digital Business are the main courses of knowledge that support the study of digital business. These overarching categories encompass the highest tier of digital business operations. They are: Digital Strategy and Positioning, Practice and Frameworks, Risk, Tools and Technology, and Continual Improvement and Innovation. We should note that Digital Business itself has no native organization. Organizing the phenomenon is inherently artificial and is meant as a guide; not an absolute or rigid path. Indeed, in subsequent releases, it is entirely possible that the five pillars change. With that said:
The process of testing two versions—i.e. ”Version A” and “Version B”—of digital content with a target audience to learn which one the audience prefers. When it comes to digital content, this preference is usually measured by conversion rate—the number of visitors to a website or app who take a desired action during their visit (things like signing up for an email list, purchasing a product or service, or subscribing for a paid membership).
A risk response that means that the organization takes the chance that the risk will occur with full impact on objectives if it does.
Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) involves team members with different perspectives (customer, development, testing) collaborating to write acceptance tests in advance of implementing the corresponding functionality.
An acceptance test is a formal description of the behavior of a software product, generally expressed as an example or a usage scenario. A number of different notations and approaches have been proposed for such examples or scenarios. In many cases the aim is that it should be possible to automate the execution of such tests by a software tool, either ad-hoc to the development team or off the shelf.
A system in which the behavior of agents changes, and they self-organize in response to events.
The overall level of risk to the program when all the risks are viewed as a totality rather than individually. This could include the outputs of particular scenarios or risk combinations.
An umbrella term for a collection of frameworks and techniques that together enable teams and individuals to work in a way that is typified by collaboration, prioritization, iterative and incremental delivery, and timeboxing. There are several specific methods (or frameworks) that are classed as Agile, such as Scrum, Lean, and Kanban. (AgileSHIFT) A mindset and style of working that is characterized by quickness of response, flexibility, and adaptability. (AgileSHIFT) An umbrella term for a collection of frameworks and techniques that together enable teams and individuals to work in a way that is typified by collaboration, prioritization, iterative and incremental delivery, and timeboxing. There are several specific methods (or frameworks) that are classed as Agile, such as Scrum, Lean, and Kanban. (ITIL). A broad term for a collection of behaviors frameworks concepts and techniques that go together to enable teams and individuals to work in an agile way that is typified by collaboration prioritization iterative and incremental delivery and timeboxing. There are several specific methods (or frameworks) that are classed as agile such as Scrum and Kanban. PRINCE2 is completely compatible with working in an agile way. (PRINCE2)
A way of working that both enables teams to work in agile ways and ensures that the whole organization develops enterprise-wide agility. In doing so it prepares and supports the organization for transformation.
The application of machine learning and big data to IT operations to receive continuous insights which provide continuous fixes and improvements via automation. Also referred to as ‘artificial intelligence for IT operations’ or ‘algorithmic IT operations’.
A system either manual or automated used to notify workers and other parts of an organization of quality or process issues. The Andon system originated in manufacturing but is now widely used in IT.
Antipatterns are common solutions to common problems where the solution is ineffective and may result in undesired consequences.
The practice of providing an understanding of all the different elements that make up an organization and how those elements relate to one another.
Highly advanced automation that demonstrates capabilities of general reasoning learning and human-like intelligence; a branch of computer science and engineering focused on simulating intelligent behavior in computer systems.
An item thing or entity that has potential or actual value to an organization [ISO 55000:2014].
A database or list of assets, capturing key attributes such as ownership and financial value.
In the context of software development, build refers to the process that converts files and other assets under the developers’ responsibility into a software product in its final or consumable form. The build is automated when these steps are repeatable, require no direct human intervention, and can be performed at any time with no information other than what is stored in the source code control repository.
The ability of an IT service or other configuration item to perform its agreed function when required.
The practice of ensuring that services deliver agreed levels of availability to meet the needs of customers and users.
A risk response to a threat where the threat either can no longer have an impact or can no longer happen.
Link building, sometimes informally called “backlinking” or “backlinks”, is the process of getting external websites (websites other than your own) to link back to your content. In other words, if you’ve written a blog post on “digital marketing terms” and another site links to it from an article of their own, you’ve just engaged in link building.
A list of new features for a product. The list may be made up of user stories which are structured in a way that describes who wants the feature and why. It is also a generic term that can be defined in terms of releases, sprints and products.
Backlog grooming is when the product owner and some, or all, of the rest of the team refine the backlog on a regular basis to ensure the backlog contains the appropriate items, that they are prioritized, and that the items at the top of the backlog are ready for delivery.
Activities and resources within a service relationship that are visible to both the service provider and the service consumer.
BDD is a practice where members of the team discuss the expected behavior of a system in order to build a shared understanding of expected functionality.
The measurable improvement resulting from an outcome perceived as an advantage by one or more stakeholders. NEED PMI DEFINITION HERE RELATED TO PROGRAM MANAGEMENT AND RISK MANAGEMENT
The use of very large volumes of structured and unstructured data from a variety of sources to gain new insights.
A non-judgmental description and analysis of the circumstances and events that preceded an incident.
An open distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way.
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a website who leave the website quickly without really looking at it. Most often this refers to the algorithm used by Google Analytics and is calculated in percentages. Sites aim to keep this number low—they want you to spend time on the page but also to bounce from page to page on their site—and so they’ll try to keep content as engaging and relevant to you as possible.
A technique that helps a team to generate ideas. Ideas are not reviewed during the brainstorming session, but at a later stage. Brainstorming is often used by problem management to identify possible causes.
A technique for showing progress (e.g. such as with a timebox) where work that is completed and work still to do are shown with one or more lines that are updated regularly or daily.
A burn-down chart is a run chart of outstanding work. See also burn chart.
A burn-up chart is a run chart of completed work. See also burn chart.
Burndown charts and burnup charts track the amount of output (in terms of hours, story points, or backlog items) a team has completed across an iteration or a project.
Business agility is the ability of an organization to sense changes internally or externally and respond accordingly in order to deliver value to its customers.
The practice of analyzing a business or some element of a business defining its needs and recommending solutions to address these needs and/or solve a business problem and create value for stakeholders. Business analysis enables an organization to communicate its needs in a meaningful way express the rationale for change and design and describe solutions that enable value creation in alignment with the organization’s objectives.
The practice of analyzing a business or some element of a business, defining its needs and recommending solutions to address these needs and/or solve a business problem, and create value for stakeholders.
A justification for the expenditure of organizational resources providing information about costs benefits options risks and issues.
A key activity in the practice of service continuity management that identifies vital business functions and their dependencies.
A role responsible for maintaining good relationships with one or more customers.
In digital marketing terms, the buyer’s journey is the trajectory of a consumer’s movement from product awareness, to engagement with a product, to finally deciding to make a purchase. Digital marketers need to understand how to “attract, engage, and delight” consumers (as the marketing platform HubSpot puts it) in order to carry them from the “I don’t know anything about this brand or product” stage to “I’m all in.” This process includes using techniques to better understand your customer (personas, user research) and strategies for optimizing the sales process (via e-mail marketing, retargeting, etc.)
The ability of an organization, person, process, application, configuration item, or IT service to carry out an activity.
The practice of ensuring that services achieve agreed and expected performance levels, satisfying current and future demand in a cost-effective way.
The activity of creating a plan that manages resources to meet demand for services.
The event or combination of events that enables an organization, function, or practice to become different in some way from what it was before, and deliver added value. A change is often made possible because of the delivery of a new capability, way of working, product, or service (AgileSHIFT). The addition, modification, or removal of anything that could have a direct or indirect effect on services. (ITIL Foundation, Change Management Practice)
A role that facilitates the development application and advocation of new ways of working.
A person or group responsible for authorizing a change.
The money allocated to the change authority available to be spent on authorized requests for change.
The procedure that ensures that all changes that may affect the project’s agreed objectives are identified assessed and then approved rejected or deferred.
The practice of ensuring that risks are properly assessed, authorizing changes to proceed and managing a change schedule in order to maximize the number of successful service and product changes.
A repeatable approach to the management of a particular type of change.
A calendar that shows planned and historical changes.
The discipline of experimenting on a system in order to build confidence in the system’s capability to withstand turbulent conditions in production.
A tool that tests the resilience of IT systems by intentionally disabling components in production to test how remaining systems respond to the outage.
The click through rate is the percentage of users who click on links in web pages or marketing emails. CTR is significant because it measures how many users are actively engaging with linked content on a site.
A model for enabling on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provided with minimal management effort or provider interaction.
The process by which an organization and its stakeholders work collaboratively to create value for all parties through improving or developing services and products. Stakeholders include CTO, RTO, external suppliers, users, and customers. See also value.
Working with others to achieve common shared goals.
Pillar: Tools & TechnologyCollective code ownership is the explicit convention that every team member can make changes to any code file as necessary: either to complete a development task, to repair a defect, or to improve the code’s overall structure.
A system in which agents’ interactions are dynamic and often unpredictable.
A systems thinking approach based on the recognition and understanding of the various levels of complexity inherent in the systems and the context in which they operate.
Both the act and result of ensuring that a standard or set of guidelines is followed or that proper consistent accounting or other practices are being employed.
Any component that needs to be managed in order to deliver an IT service.
A database used to store configuration records throughout their lifecycle. The CMDB also maintains the relationships between configuration records.
A set of tools, data, and information that is used to support service configuration management.
A record containing the details of a configuration item (CI). Each configuration record documents the lifecycle of a single CI. Configuration records are stored in a configuration management database.
The restrictions or limitations by which a project is bound.
The technique of packaging software into standardized lightweight stand-alone executable units for development shipment and deployment.
Content marketing describes the process of creating and distributing content used for digital marketing campaigns. Includes blogs, white papers, videos, webinars, podcasts
Content marketing specialists who oversee the creation and distribution of digital marketing content
digital marketers who specialize in creating and implementing content strategy
Content strategy is the planning and implementation of digital content—in other words, an overarching content strategy guides a content marketer’s campaigns. It’s a content marketing team’s “master plan” to make their content work toward a uniform and cohesive end. Includes style guides, pillar pages, content testing, and digital positioning.
Content testing is a clear way to gauge how content performances and build an overall content strategy moving forward. This testing looks similar to what you might see in the user experience (UX) research field, with one of the simplest and most effective ways to test content being A/B testing, defined earlier in this list.
Something that is held in reserve, typically to handle time and cost variances, or risks. PRINCE2 does not advocate the use of contingency because estimating variances is managed by setting tolerances, and risks are managed through appropriate risk responses (including the fallback response that is contingent on the risk occurring).
The practice of aligning an organization’s practices and services with changing business needs through the ongoing identification and improvement of all elements involved in the effective management of products and services.
An approach to software development in which software can be released to production at any time. Frequent deployments are possible, but deployment decisions are taken case by case usually because organizations prefer a slower rate of deployment.
Continuous deployment aims to reduce the time elapsed between writing a line of code and making that code available to users in production. To achieve continuous deployment, the team relies on infrastructure that automates and instruments the various steps leading up to deployment, so that after each integration successfully meeting these release criteria, the live application is updated with new code.
An approach to software development in which changes go through the pipeline and are automatically put into the production environment enabling multiple production deployments per day. Continuous deployment relies on continuous delivery.
Continuous Integration is the practice of merging code changes into a shared repository several times a day in order to release a product version at any moment. This requires an integration procedure which is reproducible and automated.
An approach to integrating building and testing code within the software development environment.
The means of managing a risk ensuring that a business objective is achieved or that a process is followed.
CRO is a marketing system for raising the percentage of website visitors who convert to paying customers. CRO methods usually involve encouraging users to take specific actions on the website, such as filling out a web form, signing up for a trial, or joining an email list.
The ongoing activity of maintaining a sound system of internal control by which the directors and officers of an organization ensure that effective management systems, including financial monitoring and control systems, have been put in place to protect assets, earning capacity and the reputation of the organization.
A set of actions to resolve a threat to a plan’s tolerances or a defect in a product.
The benefits that are expected to be lost when the launch or update of a service offering is delayed.
The permissible deviation in a plan’s cost that is allowed before it needs to be escalated to the next level of management. Cost tolerance is documented in the respective plan. See also tolerance.
A necessary precondition for the achievement of intended results.
Customer development is a four-step framework that provides a way to use a scientific approach to validate assumptions about your product and business.
The sum of functional and emotional interactions with a service and service provider as perceived by a customer.
The complete end-to-end experience that service customers have with one or more service providers and/or their products through touchpoints and service interactions.
An approach to sales and customer relations in which staff focus on helping customers to meet their long-term needs and wants.
The daily meeting is one of the most commonly practiced Agile techniques and presents opportunity for a team to get together on a regular basis to coordinate their activities.
Information that has been translated into a form that is efficient for movement or processing.
A branch of data science focused on analyzing raw data in order to draw conclusions about it using highly automated techniques.
The definition of done is an agreed upon list of the activities deemed necessary to get a product increment, usually represented by a user story, to a done state by the end of a sprint.
A practical and human-centered approach used by product and service designers to solve complex problems and find practical and creative solutions that meet the needs of an organization and its customers.
A collaborative approach between development and operations aimed at creating a product or service where the two types of work and even the teams merge as much as possible. (PRINCE2, Agile). An organizational culture that aims to improve the flow of value to customers. DevOps focuses on culture, automation, Lean, measurement, and sharing (CALMS). An organizational culture that aims to improve the flow of value to customers. DevOps focuses on culture, automation, Lean, measurement, and sharing (CALMS) (ITIL Foundation)
An enterprise characterized by: 1. creation of digitalized products or services that are either delivered fully digitally (e.g., digital media or online banking), or 2. where physical products and services are obtained by the customer by digital means (e.g., online car-sharing services).
A “digital-first” culture is where the business models, plans, architectures, and implementation strategies are based on a digital organization architecture that inspires and rewards a number of desired behaviors, such as servant leadership, strategic value chain thinking, consumer focus, fault tolerance, agility, and more. It requires a workforce with a sense of psychological safety, digitally savvy enough to execute a “digital-first approach”.
Digital marketing includes any and all online strategies used to sell products and services (whether you’re targeting potential audiences via computer, iPad, or app). Includes: Customizing an audience from a global population—digital audiences can be reached anywhere around the world, meaning digital marketers can fine tune their audiences using demographics that best fit their marketing campaign.
Audience interaction—unlike more passive traditional marketing (e.g. a television viewer watching a commercial), digital marketers are able to interact directly with their audience through forums like website comment sections, social media accounts, and interactive quizzes.
Using multiple delivery channels based on audience needs and preferences—dynamic web content lets digital marketers connect with an audience through a range of delivery channels (including YouTube videos, Instagram posts, blog articles, and marketing emails)
Online marketing events—similar to conferences and conventions in traditional marketing, digital marketers host online events like webinars, product demonstrations, and courses, which can often be attended “live” or viewed afterward on demand.
An organization that is enabled by digital technology to do business significantly differently or to do significantly different business.
Created by The Open Group and first published in January 2020, this document collects information about digital transformation and is intended to provide a guide for digital practitioners. DPBoK draws from many other bodies of knowledge, standards, and publications. According to the document, “It integrates concepts from diverse sources such as business model innovation, product research and monetization, behavioral economics, Agile, DevOps, Enterprise Architecture, organizational development, service management, product management, data management, operations management, and corporate governance. Through providing an integrated and rationalized framework, based on notable and proven practices and perspectives, this document is positioned as leading guidance for digital technology and management professionals worldwide.”
A product is digital when digital technology plays a significant role in its goods resources or associated service interactions.
Technology that digitizes something or processes digital data. Digital Technology refers to information technology (IT) and the parts of operational technology (OT) that have been digitized.
According to DPBoK, Digital Technology is IT in the form of a product or service that is digitally consumable to create or enable business value. A broader definition includes technologies that enable practices and processes in a digital business. For example, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, 3D and 4D Printing, and Blockchain are all examples of digital technology. See also digitization.
The radical, fundamental change towards becoming a digital enterprise. Digital Transformation involves the use of digital technology to enable a significant improvement in the realization of an organization’s objectives that could not feasibly have been achieved by non-digital means. (ITIL CDS). The integration of digital technology into all areas of an organization, fundamentally changing how it operates and delivers value to customers. It also requires a cultural change within that organization to continually challenge the status quo and innovate. (AgileSHIFT). The evolution of traditional business models to meet the needs of highly empowered customers, with technology playing an enabling role. (ITIL Foundation)
The application of digital technology to create additional business value within the primary value chain of enterprises.
The conversion of analog information into digital form.
A set of clearly defined plans related to how an organization will recover from a disaster as well as return to a pre-disaster condition, considering the four dimensions of service management.
An entity that changes the way in which an industry or sector operates, especially in a new, more effective, and unexpected way. It may create a market where none existed before. It can be caused by, or expressed through, digital capabilities, channels, or assets.
An agile project delivery framework developed and owned by the DSDM consortium.
The ability to understand the way people feel and react and to use this skill to make good judgements and to avoid or solve conflicts.
A risk response to an opportunity where proactive actions are taken to enhance both the probability of the event occurring and the impact of the event should it occur.
The ability of an organization to move and adapt quickly in response to shifting customer and market needs. AgileSHIFT encourages and enables enterprise agility.
A subset of the IT infrastructure that is used for a particular purpose, for example a live environment or test environment. Can also mean the external conditions that influence or affect something.
a large user story
In software development, an “estimate” is the evaluation of the effort necessary to carry out a given development task; this is most often expressed in terms of duration.
Any change of state that has significance for the management of a service or other configuration item.
A risk response to an opportunity. It means seizing the opportunity to ensure that it will happen and that the impact will be realized.
Exploratory testing is, more than strictly speaking a “practice,” a style or approach to testing software which is often contrasted to “scripted testing.”
A customer who works for an organization other than the service provider.
an agile software development framework that aims to produce higher quality software, and higher quality of life for the development team. XP is the most specific of the agile frameworks regarding appropriate engineering practices for software development.
A technique whereby the outputs of one part of a system are used as inputs to the same part of the system.
The four perspectives that are critical to the effective and efficient facilitation of value for customers and other stakeholders in the form of products and services.
A labor market characterized by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work and the absence of a centralized workspace.
Tangible resources that are transferred or available for transfer from a service provider to a service consumer, together with ownership and associated rights and responsibilities.
The means by which an organization is directed and controlled.
The team meets regularly to reflect on the most significant events that occurred since the previous such meeting, and identify opportunities for improvement.
The application of digital technology for significant business enablement where time to market time to customer time to change and speed in general are crucial. High velocity is not restricted to fast development; it is required throughout the service value chain from innovation at the start through development and operations to the actual realization of value.
An IT operating model where digital technology plays a major role in the co-creation of value.
An unplanned interruption to a service or reduction in the quality of a service.
The practice of minimizing the negative impact of incidents by restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible.
In an Agile context, Incremental Development is when each successive version of a product is usable, and each builds upon the previous version by adding user-visible functionality.
A market in which there is a significant gap between what customers require and what existing organizations are currently offering.
The construct of information related to the taxonomy and relationships of data to other data required to present and share content in a meaningful and representative way.
A general term used to describe the use of walls or boards containing information that can be readily accessed by people working on the project. It can contain any information although it would typically show such things as work to do and how work is progressing.
Information radiator is the term for any of a number of visual displays which a team places in a highly visible location, so that all team members can see the latest information at a glance.
The practice of protecting an organization by understanding and managing risks to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information.
The policy that governs an organization’s approach to information security management.
The application of digital technology to store retrieve transmit and manipulate data (data processing) often in the context of a business or other kind of organization.
The practice of overseeing the infrastructure and platforms used by an organization. This enables the monitoring of technology solutions available, including solutions from third parties.
The exposure arising from a specific risk before any action has been taken to manage it.
“Integration” (or “integrating”) refers to any efforts still required for a project team to deliver a product suitable for release as a functional whole.
Deliberately disobeying or disregarding rules in order to avoid a dangerous situation or ‘doing the right thing’.
A customer who works for the same organization as the service provider.
The interconnection of devices via the internet that were not traditionally thought of as IT assets, but now include embedded computing capability and network connectivity.
A register used to capture and maintain information on all of the issues that are being managed formally. The issue register should be monitored by the project manager on a regular basis.
Any financially valuable component that can contribute to the delivery of an IT product or service.
The practice of planning and managing the full lifecycle of all IT assets.
All of the hardware, software, networks, and facilities that are required to develop, test, deliver, monitor, manage, and support IT services.
A service based on the use of information technology.
An iteration is a timebox during which development takes place. The duration may vary from project to project and is usually fixed.
Agile projects are iterative insofar as they intentionally allow for “repeating” software development activities, and for potentially “revisiting” the same work products (the phrase “planned rework” is sometimes used; refactoring is a good example).
Best-practice guidance for IT service management.
A model which provides organizations with a structured approach to implementing improvements.
Recommendations that can guide an organization in all circumstances regardless of changes in its goals, strategies, type of work, or management structure.
An operating model for service providers that covers all the key activities required to effectively manage products and services.
A Japanese philosophy that literally means ‘good change’ but is widely understood to refer to continual improvement. It involves everyone contributing on a regular basis to make many small beneficial changes that build up over time to improve the way a team or organization works.
The Kanban Method is a means to design, manage and improve flow for knowledge work and allows teams to start where they are to drive evolutionary change. It is a means of identifying potential blockages and resource conflicts and managing work in progress.
A Kanban Board is a visual workflow tool consisting of multiple columns. Each column represents a different stage in the workflow process.
A model, developed by Professor Noriaki Kano, which is used to help understand customer preferences. The Kano model considers attributes of a product or service grouped into areas such as basic factors, excitement factors and performance factors.
An important metric used to evaluate the success in meeting an objective.
The practice of maintaining and improving the effective, efficient, and convenient use of information and knowledge across an organization.
A problem that has been analyzed but has not been resolved.
A landing page is an individual web page used to promote specific marketing or advertising campaigns. When a company executes an online event to drive traffic, leads, or sales, customers are funneled to this page, where the event’s vital details and CTA (Call to Action) are posted. Landing pages are designed to encourage visitors to follow the CTA—sign up for a webinar or giveaway, purchase a sale item, etc.
used to keep leads (people on your email list) interested in your brand and to communicate brand value (e.g. a newsletter with links to relevant, helpful articles on your blog).
An approach that focuses on improving workflows by maximizing value through the elimination of waste.
A work environment where trust respect curiosity enquiry playfulness and intensity all co-exist to support learning and discovery.
An informal repository for lessons that apply to this project or future projects.
An applied form of artificial intelligence based on the principle of systems responding to data and adapting their actions and outputs as they are continually exposed to more of it.
An incident with significant business impact, requiring an immediate coordinated resolution.
A technique by which variances from plan that exceed a pre-set control limit are escalated for action (e.g. where spends exceed budget by 10 per cent).
Marketing automation describes the use of software or online services (like HubSpot, MailChimp, and Act-On) to automate repetitive marketing tasks like emails, customer relationship management, social media posts, and analytics. Marketing Automation programs allow marketers to input specific criteria for the tasks in question and that data is interpreted and executed by the program.
A measure of the reliability, efficiency and effectiveness of an organization, practice, or process.
A method of assessing organizational capability in a given area of skill.
A metric of how frequently a service or other configuration item fails.
A metric of how quickly a service is restored after a failure.
A means of decreasing uncertainty based on one or more observations that are expressed in quantifiable units.
The practice of supporting good decision-making and continual improvement by decreasing levels of uncertainty.
An explanation of someone’s understanding of how something works in the surrounding world.
A measurement or calculation that is monitored or reported for management and improvement.
A Milestone Retrospective is a team’s detailed analysis of the project’s significant events after a set period of time or at the project’s end.
A Minimum Marketable Feature is a small, self-contained feature that can be developed quickly and that delivers significant value to the user.
A technique of providing users with the minimum set of capabilities to enable rapid assessment and learning. Minimum viable approaches can be applied to products services practices processes and process outputs.
A Minimum Viable Product is, as Eric Ries said, the “version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.”
In a PRINCE2 Agile context the term MVP broadly aligns with the Lean Startup view that it is a ‘version of the final product which allows the maximum amount of validated learning with the least effort’. This should not be confused with the viability of the project as a whole. Typically, an MVP would be delivered as early as possible during the project. It is important to note that an MVP is about learning and may not go into operational use; it may be in the form of a simple experiment or prototype. (PRINCE2 Agile) A product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development. (ITIL Foundation)
Mob Programming is a software development approach where the whole team works on the same thing, at the same time, in the same space, and at the same computer.
A representation of a system, practice, process, service, or other entity that is used to understand and predict its behavior and relationships.
Any episode in which the customer or user comes into contact with an aspect of the organization and gets an impression of the quality of its service. It is the basis for setting and fulfilling client expectations and ultimately achieving client satisfaction.
Repeated observation of a system, practice, process, service, or other entity to detect events and to ensure that the current status is known.
The practice of systematically observing services and service components, and recording and reporting selected changes of state identified as events.
This technique is used to categorize items such as requirements or tasks into one of the four following levels of how they relate to a deadline. ~ Must have ~ Should have ~ Could have ~ Won’t have for now.
The use of multiple service providers offering similar (if not the same) services balancing the risks of relying on a single provider with the overhead of managing work across multiple providers.
Multichannel marketing uses a variety of communication platforms (website banner ads, Facebook ads, marketing emails, a blog) to interact with potential customers. This approach allows users to choose which channel they want to use to interact with your product and increases options for converting impressions into customers.
The selection of the ways of working appropriate to the task, the team, the individuals (including customer, stakeholders, leaders, workers), and the context.
A metric used to measure customer loyalty; often used as a proxy to measure customer satisfaction.
A Niko-Niko Calendar is updated daily with each team member’s mood for that day. Over time the calendar reveals patterns of change in the moods of the team, or of individual members.
In Open Space meetings, events, or conferences, participants create and manage their own agenda of parallel sessions around a specific theme.
A conceptual and/or visual representation of how an organization co-creates value with its customers and other stakeholders as well as how the organization runs itself.
An uncertain event that could have a favorable impact on objectives or benefits.
A person or a group of people that has its own functions with responsibilities, authorities, and relationships to achieve its objectives.
The practice of ensuring that changes in an organization are smoothly and successfully implemented and that lasting benefits are achieved by managing the human aspects of the changes.
The ability of an organization to anticipate, prepare for, respond to, and adapt to unplanned external influences.
The speed, effectiveness, and efficiency with which an organization operates. Organizational velocity influences time to market, quality, safety, costs, and risks.
One of the four dimensions of service management. It ensures that the way an organization is structured and managed, as well as its roles, responsibilities, and systems of authority and communication, is well defined and
A result for a stakeholder enabled by one or more outputs.
A tangible or intangible deliverable of an activity.
The process of having external suppliers provide products and services that were previously provided internally.
While some website traffic, leads, and customers will come through “unpaid” sources (basically legwork and site engineering done by digital marketers), it’s also possible to generate traffic through paid ads. Paid ads bypass the “sweat equity” of doing things like SEO and social media marketing by hand, ensuring that your marketing content will jump to the head of the line—but, like the name suggests, it will cost you. This includes social media ads and display ads.
Pair programming consists of two programmers sharing a single workstation (one screen, keyboard and mouse among the pair).
A management technique that relies on asking staff for something in order to achieve the opposite result; for example, asking for more risks to be taken to decrease their impact.
Derives from the observation that ‘work expands to fill the time available for its completion’ and that a sufficiently large bureaucracy will generate enough internal work to keep itself ‘busy’ and so justify its continued existence without commensurate output.
One of the four dimensions of service management. It encompasses the relationships an organization has with other organizations that are involved in the design, development, deployment, delivery, support, and/or continual
A relationship between two organizations that involves working closely together to achieve common goals and objectives.
A workload profile of one or more business activities. PBAs are used to help the service provider understand and support different levels of service consumer activity.
A fictional yet realistic description of a typical or target customer/user of a product or service.
Pillar pages are a blog post or landing page that superserves a topic. For instance, a pillar page about digital marketing should cover ALL THE THINGS digital marketing—but at a surface level. Each subtopic covered will then link to other site content that tackles the subtopic in detail. By aggregating content in a cluster (the aim of a pillar page), Google can recognize that all of these articles are related to the same general topic, giving a site increased authority on the topic and improving the ranking for each individual article. Meanwhile, pillar pages themselves become a way of funneling an audience from a general topic of interest and into subtopics that meet their specific needs (increasing time spent on site, which is a win for digital marketing).
A test implementation of a service with a limited scope in a live environment.
A four-stage cycle for process management, attributed to W. Edwards Deming. Plan-Do-Check-Act is also called the Deming Cycle. Plan, design, or revise processes that support the IT services.
An approach to estimation used by Agile teams. Each team member “plays” a card bearing a numerical value corresponding to a point estimation for a user story.
The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) is an internationally recognized standard that includes the fundamental knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques for project management. The PMBOK Guide, published by the Project Management Institute, defines five basic process groups and 10 knowledge areas typical of almost all projects.
A portfolio is the totality of an organization’s investment (or segment thereof) in the changes required to achieve its strategic objectives.
The practice of ensuring that an organization has the right mix of programs, projects, products, and services to execute its strategy within its funding and resource constraints.
A review after the implementation of a change, to evaluate success and identify opportunities for improvement.
A set of organizational resources designed for performing work or accomplishing an objective.
An action of selecting tasks to work on first when it is impossible to assign resources to all tasks in the backlog.
This is the evaluated likelihood of a particular threat or opportunity actually happening including a consideration of the frequency with which this may arise.
A cause, or potential cause, of one or more incidents.
The practice of reducing the likelihood and impact of incidents by identifying actual and potential causes of incidents, and managing workarounds and known errors.
A set of interrelated or interacting activities that transform inputs into outputs. Processes define the sequence of activities and their dependencies.
A product backlog is a list of the new features, changes to existing features, bug fixes, infrastructure changes or other activities that a team may deliver in order to achieve a specific outcome. The product backlog is the single authoritative source for things that a team works on. That means that nothing gets done that isn’t on the product backlog. Conversely, the presence of a product backlog item on a product backlog does not guarantee that it will be delivered. It represents an option the team has for delivering a specific outcome rather than a commitment.
A product backlog is a list of the new features, changes to existing features, bug fixes, infrastructure changes or other activities that a team may deliver in order to achieve a specific outcome.
The product owner is a role created by the Scrum Framework responsible for making sure the team delivers the desired outcome.
A temporary organization that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to an agreed business case.
The period from initiation of a project to the acceptance of the project product.
The planning delegating monitoring and control of all aspects of the project and the motivation of those involved to achieve the project objectives within the expected performance targets for time cost quality scope benefits and risk.
The practice of ensuring that all an organization’s projects are successfully delivered.
Something created to help prove or disprove an idea, or to help to improve the general understanding of a situation (e.g. the customer’s needs). It could be something that evolves into a real product or is thrown away.
The time factor of risk (i.e. when the risk may occur). The impact of a risk may vary in severity depending on when the risk occurs.
A way of working in which work is started or ‘pulled’ from upstream, but only as capacity becomes available. Kanban systems are pull systems. The availability of capacity and the ability to pull work is indicated by the gap between current work in progress and the corresponding limit. See also push system.
The act of placing work into a system or activity without due regard to its available capacity. See also pull system.
The degree to which a set of inherent characteristics of a product service process person organization system or resource fulfils requirements.
A planned and systematic process which provides confidence that outputs will meet their defined quality criteria when tested under quality control. It is carried out independently of the project team.
The process of monitoring specific results to determine whether they comply with the relevant standards, and of identifying ways to eliminate causes of unsatisfactory performance.
A model used to help define roles and responsibilities. RACI stands for responsible accountable consulted and informed.
The activity of returning a configuration item to normal operation after a failure.
The point to which information used by an activity must be restored to enable the activity to operate on resumption.
The maximum acceptable period of time following a service disruption that can elapse before the lack of business functionality severely impacts the organization.
A response to a risk where proactive actions are taken to reduce the probability of the event occurring by performing some form of control and/or to reduce the impact of the event should it occur.
The practice of establishing and nurturing links between an organization and its stakeholders at strategic and tactical levels.
An abstract estimating technique that encourages teams to consider the ‘size’ of a task, using only other tasks as a point of reference.
The practice of making new and changed services and features available for use.
The ability of a product, service, or other configuration item to perform its intended function for a specified period of time or number of cycles.
A view of the service catalog, providing details on service requests for existing and new services, which is made available for the user.
A description of a proposed change used to initiate change enablement.
The risk remaining after the risk response has been applied.
The action of solving an incident or problem.
Personnel, material, finance, or other entity that is required for the execution of an activity or the achievement of an objective. Resources used by an organization may be owned by the organization or used according to an
Data that is accurate precise and subjected to rigorous quality control.
A possible event that could cause harm or loss or make it more difficult to achieve objectives. Can also be defined as uncertainty of outcome and can be used in the context of measuring the probability of positive outcomes as well as negative outcomes.
An organization’s unique attitude towards risk-taking that in turn dictates the amount of risk that it considers is acceptable.
The identification and evaluation of risks.
The estimation of probability and impact of an individual risk taking into account predetermined standards target risk levels interdependencies and other relevant factors.
The process of understanding the net effect of identified threats and opportunities on an activity when aggregated together.
The extent of risk borne by the organization at the time.
The determination of what could pose a risk; a process to describe and list sources of risk (threats and opportunities).
The systematic application of principles, approaches, and processes to the tasks of identifying and assessing risks, and then planning and implementing risk responses.
An approach describing the goals of applying risk management as well as the procedure that will be adopted roles and responsibilities risk tolerances the timing of risk management interventions the tools and techniques that will be used and the reporting requirements.
The practice of ensuring that an organization understands and effectively handles risks.
A named individual who is responsible for the management monitoring and control of all aspects of a particular risk assigned to them including the implementation of the selected responses to address the threats or to maximize the opportunities.
A description of the types of risk that are faced by an organization its exposure to those risks.
A record of identified risks relating to an initiative including their status and history.
Actions that may be taken to bring a situation to a level where exposure to risk is acceptable to the organization. These responses fall into a number of risk response categories.
The threshold levels of risk exposure that with appropriate approvals can be exceeded but which when exceeded will trigger some form of response (e.g. reporting the situation to senior management for action).
A sales funnel is a digital marketing model where potential customers are led through a series of events or actions that can be mapped out in the shape of funnel. The broadest level at the top of the funnel involves drawing users to your website, after which they move down the funnel where they’re offered services or resources if they sign up for your email list, until eventually they move to the bottom of the funnel and become a paying customer. The broadest level at the top of the funnel involves drawing users to your website, after which they move down the funnel where they’re offered services or resources if they sign up for your email list, until eventually they move to the bottom of the funnel and become a paying customer.
Scrum is a process framework used to manage product development and other knowledge work.
The scrum master is responsible for ensuring the team lives agile values and principles and follows the practices that the team agreed they would use.
SEO (search engine optimization) is the digital marketing practice of optimizing a website so it’s more likely to show up in unpaid search results (e.g. it’s one of the first sites to appear when you “Google” a related topic). SEO is done through using algorithms based on specific search engine’s behaviors, analyzing the keywords typed into search engines, and researching which search engines are popular with particular demographics.
SEO experts who help business implement best SEO practices to their online content
systematic reviews of your website’s performance in terms of benchmarks like search ranking, traffic numbers, time users spend on each page, external links viewers are using to get to your site, links visitors are clicking once they get to your site, etc. When you track, collect, and record this data, you establish a clear, numbers-driven sense of your site’s performance. This allows you to implement site changes, additions, and improvements from a strategic vantage point.
digital marketers who create and manage social media content and accounts
Like blogs, social media plays a big part in digital marketing. Most actual lead generation and customer conversion takes place on blogs and website landing pages, but social media marketing serves as an amplification of lead generation efforts.
A sprint backlog is the subset of product backlog that a team targets to deliver during a sprint in order to accomplish the sprint goal and make progress toward a desired outcome.
Sprint planning is an event that occurs at the beginning of a sprint where the team determines the product backlog items they will work on during that sprint.
Agile teams generally prefer to express estimates in units other than the time-honored “man-hours.” Possibly the most widespread unit is “story points.”
A style guide is a document with guidelines for making marketing content conform to a brand’s look and voice. In terms of visual content, this includes things like: color palettes, font sets, logos, voice, tone, preferred definitions and terms, standardized conventions for capitalization, punctuation, etc. Since style guides are designed to appeal to a company or client’s particular market niche, they help present a consistent look, tone, and message that an audience can recognize and trust across an entire digital platform.
The team aims for a work pace that they would be able to sustain indefinitely.
“Test-driven development” is a style of programming in which three activities are tightly interwoven: coding, testing (in the form of writing unit tests) and design (in the form of refactoring).
The daily meeting is structured around some variant of the following three questions: What have you completed? What will you do next? What is getting in your way?
A timebox is a previously agreed period of time during which a person or a team works steadily towards completion of some goal.
Traffic is the total amount of users who visit a website. Overall traffic is then broken down into specific types of visits—like unique visitors and total clicks.
A unit test is a short program fragment written and maintained by the developers on the product team, which exercises some narrow part of the product’s source code and checks the results.
Usability testing is an empirical, exploratory technique to answer questions such as “how would an end user respond to our software under realistic conditions?”
In consultation with the customer or product owner, the team divides up the work to be done into functional increments called “user stories.”
At the end of each iteration, the team adds up effort estimates associated with user stories that were completed during that iteration. This total is called velocity.
The following blog post offers complete context surrounding the conception of Beyond20's Dictionary of Digital Business.
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