> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://tbw.rangle.io/the-better-way/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://tbw.rangle.io/the-better-way/glossary.md).

# Glossary

**Business value:** generally any initiative or goal that fulfills a near-term or long-term need of the business

**Bet:** A relatively small, hypothesis-driven initiative that may serve to create value toward a larger organizational goal .

**Compliance:** ensuring your organization adheres to the law as well as industry regulations, legally binding contracts etc.

**Continuous Deployment:** an automated testing and deployment process that releases code changes directly to a production environment for customers to consume.

**Cost of delay:** quantifies the impact of time on outcomes, typically expressed as potential revenue lost when a delayed product or service cannot be consumed by customers.

**Customer:** for the purpose of this eBook, “[customer](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Bd9xRQQZfc-b9eTFUaAZQ7_KB7fiwk4MjWd5cErio_U/edit#)” can mean either an internal facing stakeholder, or an external [customer](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Bd9xRQQZfc-b9eTFUaAZQ7_KB7fiwk4MjWd5cErio_U/edit#) to which you provide products or services. In most cases, we are referring to the latter, and will note when the case is otherwise.

**Customer experience:** the series of touchpoints that occur between a business and a customer.

**Customer time-to-value:** the duration between when a customer purchases and when they can actually realize the value of the product.

**Customer value:** one way to think of customer value is that when your product or service leads to a customer feeling more empowered, less stressed or more capable, then you’ve created customer value.

**Delay time:** the amount of time spent between two processes.

**DevOps:** a diverse set of principles and practices intended to improve overall software development flow and quality. 

**Governance:** a form of steering that articulates responsibilities, accountabilities, and authority and empowerment.

**Incremental:** generally a new edition or version of something already in process.

**Lean value tree:** a visual representation of an organizations vision, goals, objectives etc rendered in a tree format.

**Legacy systems:** long-standing software/hardware systems that may not be compatible with newer software/hardware systems

**MVP:** minimum viable product - the smallest increment of a new product that can be deployed to test assumptions about problem/solution fit

**Net present value:** the difference between what a product or service is currently worth and what it is costing to sustain the product or service.

**Principle of optionality:** mitigates uncertainty by testing a range of possible solutions without committing to any particular solution

**Process time:** the duration of time that elapses between when a task enters a process and leave the process

**Product/market fit:** the point at which a product not only solves a problem, but can also scale in terms of sales and adoption.

**Product/solution fit:** the point at which a nascent product has proven to solve a real customer problem.

**Thin-slice:** an initiative that is narrow in scope, but requires deep organizational integration, commitment and participation to succeed.

**Value stream:** An extended value stream includes those activities that precede a customer order (e.g., responding to a request for a quote, determining market needs, developing new products, etc.) or occur following the delivery of a good or service to a customer (e.g., billing and processing payments or submitting required compliance reports).