Reference
Glossary
Plain-English meanings of the terms used in this guide.
A
- Accessibility
- Making sure a service can be used by as many people as possible, including disabled people and those using assistive technology.
- Alpha
- The phase where different approaches are prototyped and tested before committing to one.
B
- Beta
- The phase where the real service is built and opened up to users.
- Backlog
- An ordered list of work still to be done.
D
- Discovery
- A short phase to understand a problem and the people affected before deciding to build anything.
- Dependency
- Software written by others that a service relies on.
L
- Legacy system
- Software that still does an important job but is hard or expensive to change.
- Live
- The phase when a service is fully available and being supported and improved.
P
- Prototype
- A quick, disposable version of an idea used to learn from users.
S
- Strangler pattern
- Replacing an old system gradually by routing functions to new components one at a time.
- Service owner
- The person accountable for a service and its outcomes.
U
- User need
- Something a person needs to do, described from their point of view and based on evidence.
- User research
- Learning about people’s needs and behaviour by observing and talking to them.
W
- WCAG
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the international standard for accessible web content.