Learning Center / Glossary

Reference

Glossary

Every term the lessons use, defined as plainly as it can be. Where a term has a lesson behind it, the definition links to it.

Outcome

A finished state in the world that somebody is responsible for reaching. "The return is filed." "The licence is renewed." It is not a task and not a project: it is a condition that has to be true, and usually has to be true again next year.

See What is an outcome.

Obligation

An outcome that is not optional and whose date is set by somebody else: a regulator, a contract, a landlord, a client. An obligation is an outcome with a consequence attached, which is why obligations are usually the first things worth naming.

Item

One piece of work inside an outcome: one renewal, one tax return, one vehicle service, one client's file. When a person says they have forty renewals this quarter, the forty renewals are forty items working towards one outcome.

Desk

The set of things a single person is answerable for. A desk is a useful unit because responsibility lands on a person, not on a department or a system. "What is on this desk" is a question with a real answer. "What is on this team" usually is not.

Register

The written list of outcomes, items, dates and owners. A register is what turns a set of remembered duties into something that can be handed over, audited, or checked by somebody who was not there. If it is not in the register, it exists only in somebody's head.

Renewal cycle

The repeating shape of a recurring obligation: a period, a lead time, and an act that must be done by a date. A licence with a twelve month term that takes two days to renew has a cycle, and the day the work starts is a different day from the day the licence expires.

See What recurs.

Lead time

How long a piece of work takes once it starts. Lead time is what converts a due date into a start date, and it is the number most often missing from a diary.

Trigger

The thing that starts the work: a date, an event, or a state. "A statement arrives" is a trigger. "The client seems ready" is not, because nothing can watch for it.

Blocker

Something that is stopping an outcome, named precisely enough that removing it is possible. "Waiting on a signed budget confirmation from a named person who is away until the 18th" is a blocker. "Waiting on the client" is a fog.

See What it is blocked on.

Constraint

A condition that cannot be changed, only designed around. A client's legal team taking three weeks to return a signature is a constraint. Treating a constraint as a blocker produces years of chasing that achieves nothing.

Mandate

The explicit permission to act on an outcome: what may be decided alone, what may be spent, what must be referred, and to whom. Missing mandates, rather than missing ability, cause most of the delay in small organisations.

See Who is answerable.

Owner

The single named person who has to answer for whether an outcome holds. Not the person doing the work, necessarily. If two people are jointly answerable, neither is.

Delegate

The person doing the work on an outcome they do not own. Delegation holds when there is a finish line somebody else can check, the delegate can actually reach it, and the delegate knows what to do when they cannot.

Approval

The moment a person takes responsibility for a decision by agreeing to it: signing, filing, sending, instructing. An approval is real only when the person could have said no and understood what they were agreeing to.

See Where a person must sign.

Threshold

A figure with a line under it, used both for spending and for checking. "No vehicle stays off hire for more than five working days without a note" is a threshold. A written threshold removes the same argument from happening every week.

Exception

The case the written rule does not cover. Every description of recurring work needs an exception path, or it will be followed until it meets its first surprise and then stop quietly or act strangely.

Definition of done

The two to four conditions that must be true for an item to be finished, written so that somebody else could check them in a few minutes. For a tenancy renewal: the signed agreement is on file, the deposit record shows the new term, the first payment is received or scheduled, and the previous term is closed.

See Knowing when it is done.

Evidence

The object that proves an outcome was reached: the confirmation number, the signed document, the receipt, the dated photograph, the log entry. An outcome without a named piece of evidence drifts into folklore, and the folklore is always that it was probably done.

Staying-true condition

Something that has to remain true continuously for an outcome to keep holding: the daily log, the current allergen sheet, the dated training record. Each one needs a check, a record and an owner.

See What has to stay true.

Machinery

The part of work that carries no judgement: waiting, fetching, rekeying, assembling, applying a fixed rule, chasing on a schedule, keeping the record. Machinery is the part that can be handed to software. Judgement is the part that cannot.

See What to hand over.

Handover

Passing an outcome, or a step inside one, to another person or to a system, with enough written description that the work can continue without the person who wrote it. A handover without a description is an abandonment with optimism attached.

Off-switch

The review date and the stopping rule attached to an outcome, so that it can end deliberately rather than by neglect. Outcomes without an off-switch accumulate, and the pile grows faster than any ability to work it.

Zombie

An outcome nobody is working on and nobody has closed. It still occupies a diary entry, a file and some part of somebody's attention, sometimes for years. The cure is one of the three real endings: finished, abandoned in writing, or handed to a named person.