Digital partner glossary: 40 terms in one sentence each
Forty terms that come up when a business works with a digital partner, each explained in one plain sentence.
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The relationship
| Term | In one sentence |
|---|---|
| Digital partner | One accountable party that builds and runs a business’s customer-facing digital side, website, hosting, software and automation, on a continuous basis, in the business’s own accounts. |
| Agency | A supplier that delivers projects, usually with its own accounts and processes, and hands over or moves on at the end. |
| Freelancer | An individual supplier, often excellent and usually charging less per hour, and a single point of failure for continuity unless ownership and documentation are in place. |
| Monthly partnership | An ongoing arrangement with a fixed fee covering maintenance, support and a change budget, reported monthly and reviewed quarterly. |
| Internal owner | The person inside the business accountable for the digital side’s priorities, numbers and decisions, who runs the partner. |
| Discovery | The paid first phase that defines scope, risks and a prototype before a build price is fixed. |
| Brief | A one-page description of the problem, users, success, what exists, what is in and out, constraints and budget range. |
| Onboarding audit | The two-week review of accounts, site, security, speed, forms and backups that starts a partnership and produces the first quarter’s list. |
| Quarterly review | The one-hour meeting four times a year that reads the numbers, decides the next short list and updates the roadmap. |
| Roadmap | A one-page ordered plan of what will change over the coming quarters, with a not-doing list, revised quarterly. |
Ownership
| Term | In one sentence |
|---|---|
| Ownership | Which party is the account holder for each layer, domain, hosting, repository, services and data, and therefore who can remove whom and who can transfer what. |
| Named collaborator | A person or team given specific, removable access to an account the business owns. |
| Repository | The version-controlled store of the site’s or software’s code and history, which should be in the business’s account. |
| Setup document | The one page describing what runs where, how it deploys, which services exist, who has access and who to call. |
| Hand-over | The defined set of code, documentation, credentials, data and context a departing partner delivers. |
| Exit clause | The contract terms defining notice, hand-over, cooperation and data at the end of the relationship. |
| Stranger test | Whether a competent developer who has never seen the system could set it up, change it and deploy it from the documentation alone. |
| Hostage situation | A supplier holding a business’s domain, hosting or code in their own name so that leaving requires their cooperation. |
The work
| Term | In one sentence |
|---|---|
| Scope | The defined deliverables included in a price, with an explicit list of what is not. |
| Change budget | A fixed monthly allowance for small changes outside the plan, sized, queued and reported. |
| Change request | A formal request to alter scope, priced and scheduled before work. |
| Preview | The full site with one proposed change, at a unique link, approved on a phone before it goes live. |
| Pipeline | The automated sequence that builds, checks, previews and deploys every change. |
| Rollback | Returning production to the previous version in one step. |
| Design system | The tokens and components that keep every page consistent and every new page fast to build. |
| Acceptance criteria | The checks agreed before work that define when a story or milestone is done. |
| Queue | The single visible list of requests, sized and ordered by the business, from which the partner works. |
| Not-doing list | The ideas considered and deliberately deferred or declined, with reasons, kept on the roadmap. |
Operations
| Term | In one sentence |
|---|---|
| Maintenance | Preventive work on a schedule: updates, backups tested, security reviewed, performance watched, reported monthly. |
| Support | Reactive work when something is broken or unclear, handled per the severity table. |
| Severity table | The definitions of critical, important, standard and planned issues with response and resolution targets and hours. |
| Response time | How quickly a person acknowledges and starts on an issue, by severity. |
| Resolution time | How quickly service is restored or a workaround is in place, by severity. |
| Monitoring | Automated watching of uptime, errors, forms, certificates and security signals, with alerts to a named person. |
| On-call | The arrangement by which a named person responds to critical alerts at any hour. |
| Monthly report | The document listing incidents with times, updates, backup tests, speed, changes and numbers, checkable against the accounts. |
| Restore test | Actually restoring a backup to a fresh environment to prove it works, on a schedule. |
| Access review | The quarterly check of who can log in to what, with leavers removed. |
| Service level agreement | The one-page agreement of severity table, hours, detection, reporting and remedy. |
| Guarantee | A written commitment with a definition, a measure, a reporting cadence and a remedy, limited to what the partner controls. |
Frequently asked questions
How should we use this glossary?
As a reference when a proposal, a report or a contract uses a term you want defined, and as a checklist of the concepts worth understanding before choosing a partner. Each sentence is enough to follow the conversation; the linked articles are there when a decision depends on the detail.
Why does the same term sometimes mean different things at different suppliers?
Because words like maintenance, support, ownership and guarantee are used loosely and sometimes deliberately vaguely. The glossary gives the meaning we use and put in writing. When a supplier uses one of these words, ask for their definition in a sentence and compare.