Glossary

UK Software DevelopmentGlossary

Browse 200 expert definitions covering UK software development technologies, regulations, methodologies, and business concepts.

200 TermsA-Z IndexUpdated 2025

Showing 24 of 200 glossary terms

A

Acceptance-criteria

Acceptance Criteria explained. Acceptance criteria are the specific conditions that a user story or feature must satisfy to be considered "do...

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A

Ab-testing

A/B Testing explained. A/B testing (split testing) is a method of comparing two versions of a product, feature, or content to determi...

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E

Event-sourcing

Event Sourcing explained. Event sourcing is an architectural pattern where the system's state is determined by a sequence of events rath...

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C

Canary-deployment

Canary Deployment explained. A canary deployment is a release strategy where a new version of software is deployed to a small subset of use...

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O

Owasp

OWASP explained. OWASP (Open Worldwide Application Security Project) is a non-profit foundation that produces free security res...

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S

Software-estimation

Software Estimation explained. Software estimation is the process of predicting the time, cost, and resources required to build a software sy...

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R

Refactoring-vs-rewriting

Refactoring vs Rewriting explained. Refactoring is improving existing code's internal structure without changing its external behaviour. Rewriting...

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P

Pull-request

Pull Request explained. A Pull Request (PR) — called a Merge Request (MR) in GitLab — is a mechanism for proposing code changes in a v...

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S

Smoke-test

Smoke Test explained. A smoke test is a quick, preliminary test of a newly deployed build to verify that the most critical functions...

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T

Technical-spike

Technical Spike explained. A technical spike is a time-boxed research task in agile development — a fixed period (typically 1–5 days) ded...

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D

Domain-name

Domain Name explained. A domain name is a human-readable address used to identify a website or web service — for example, clickmaster...

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R

Responsive-design

Responsive Design explained. Responsive design is a web design approach where a website or application adjusts its layout and content to di...

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D

Data-lake

Data Lake explained. A data lake is a centralised repository that stores large volumes of raw data in its native format until neede...

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P

Pair-review

Pair Review explained. Pair review (or paired code review) is the practice of two developers reviewing code changes together simultan...

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H

Hotspot

Hotspot explained. A hotspot in software engineering is a part of the codebase that is both frequently changed and of poor code q...

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B

Bdd

Behaviour-Driven Development explained. Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) is a software development approach that extends Test-Driven Development (TD...

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S

Shadow-it

Shadow IT explained. Shadow IT refers to software systems, devices, cloud services, or applications used within an organisation wit...

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S

Serverless-vs-containers

Serverless vs Containers explained. The serverless vs containers comparison represents two modern cloud deployment approaches. Serverless (AWS Lam...

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H

Hmrc-making-tax-digital

HMRC Making Tax Digital explained. Making Tax Digital (MTD) is HMRC's initiative to digitise the UK tax system. Businesses must keep digital reco...

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P

Privacy-notice

Privacy Notice explained. A Privacy Notice (also called a Privacy Policy or Fair Processing Notice) is a document that explains to indiv...

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T

Test-coverage

Test Coverage explained. Test coverage (or code coverage) is a metric that measures what percentage of source code is exercised by auto...

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I

Idempotency

Idempotency explained. Idempotency is a property of an operation where performing it multiple times produces the same result as perfo...

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M

Monorepo-vs-polyrepo

Monorepo vs Polyrepo explained. Monorepo (single repository) vs polyrepo (multiple repositories) is an architectural decision about how to org...

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B

Brownfield-vs-greenfield

Brownfield vs Greenfield explained. Greenfield software development means building from scratch — a new project with no existing codebase or legac...

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