Balanced scorecard – “A strategic planning and management system that is used extensively in business and industry, government, and nonprofit organizations worldwide to align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organization, improve internal and external communications, and monitor organization performance against strategic goals” (“Balanced Scorecard Basics,” n.d.).

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Best Practice– “A method of technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means, and that is used as a benchmark” (Wikipedia, 2014).

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Business Intelligence (BI)– “Business intelligence, or BI, is an umbrella term that refers to a variety of software applications used to analyze an organization’s raw data. BI as a discipline is made up of several related activities, including data mining, online analytical processing, querying and reporting” (Mulcahy, n.d.)

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Business Plan – A statement that describes how the organization will operate. It describes the business goals and objectives, and outlines the steps to be executed in order to achieve these goals and objectives

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COBIT– COBIT enables clear policy development and good practice for IT control throughout organizations. COBIT emphasizes regulatory compliance, helps organizations to increase the value attained from IT, enables alignment and simplifies implementation of the enterprises’ IT governance and control framework. (IT Governance Institute, 2007).

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CMMI– “The Capability Maturity Model Integration method, created by a group from government, industry and Carnegie-Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute, is a process improvement approach that contains 22 process areas. It is divided into appraisal, evaluation and structure. CMMI is particularly well-suited to organizations that need help with application development, lifecycle issues and improving the delivery of products throughout the lifecycle” (Schwartz, 2007).

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COSO– “This model for evaluating internal controls is from the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission. It includes guidelines on many functions, including human resource management, inbound and outbound logistics, external resources, information technology, risk, legal affairs, the enterprise, marketing and sales, operations, all financial functions, procurement and reporting. This is a more business-general framework that is less IT-specific than the others” (Schwartz, 2007).

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Competitive advantage – A business concept that describes factors that allow an organization to perform better than its competitors in order to get a strategic market position, leading to higher returns.

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Defense in Depth – an Information Assurance term aimed at delaying an attack, with the use of multiple security countermeasures to reduce the risk of unauthorized information access when a particular security control is compromised or fail.

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Disaster Recovery – ensures that in the event of a natural or human induced disaster, recovery and continuity of critical IT infrastructure are maintained.

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Gantt chart– “A standard format for displaying project schedule information by listing project activities and their corresponding start and finish dates in a calendar format; sometimes referred to as bar chart” (Schwalbe, 2010).

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Information Security – The practice of protecting information from unauthorized access, use, modification, recording or destruction.

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IT audit – The technique aimed at the identification and evaluation of risks associated with IT infrastructure, policies and operations of an organization.

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IT control –  “A procedure or policy that provides a reasonable assurance that the information technology used by an organization operates as intended, that data is reliable and that the organization is in compliance with applicable laws and regulations” (Rouse, n.d.).

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IT risk – The “business related risk caused by the use of IT within the organization. IT risk is the combination of events related to IT and the business consequences they bring and the frequency of these events occurring. In reality, IT risk is business risk” (“IT risk,” n.d.).

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ITIL (formerly known as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library) - is an  IT service management framework owned by Axelos — a joint venture between the U.K. government and Capita. ITIL is structured as five core books to cover the full-service life cycle: service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation and continual service improvement.

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IT Value Delivery – IT value delivery is defined as “on-time and within-budget delivery of appropriate quality, which achieves the benefits that were promised. In business terms, this is often translated into: competitive advantage, elapsed time for order/service fulfillment, customer satisfaction, customer wait time, employee productivity and profitability” [1].

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KPI – “Performance measures that indicate progress toward a desirable outcome. Strategic KPIs monitor the implementation and effectiveness of an organization’s strategies, determine the gap between actual and targeted performance and determine organization effectiveness and operational efficiency” (“Key Performance Indicator,” n.d.).

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Mission statement – Is a statement that outlines the fundamental purposes of the organization and is used to communicate why the organization exist, what it does and what it wishes to accomplish.

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Performance measurement – A process by which an organization tracks and monitor project completion, resource usage and products/services along with their process performance in order to accomplish mission and goals.

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Regulatory Compliance – “In general, compliance means conforming to a rule, such as a specification, policy, standard or law. Regulatory compliance describes the goal that organizations aspire to achieve in their efforts to ensure that they are aware of and take steps to comply with relevant laws and regulations” (“Regulatory compliance,” n.d.).

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Resource Management – IT resource management is the best investment in, and effective management of critical IT resources (people, information, infrastructure, application and financial capital).

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Risk management – A practice that aims to identify, analyze, assess, manage and control potential risks related to an organization activities in order to optimize company’s ability to achieve its goals.

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Strategic alignment – A method that ensures that the IT strategy plan is designed according to the overall business vision for the future in order to achieve the agreed benefits.

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Strategies – Coordinate the organization by defining mission, vision and goals in order to ensure profit, development, and sustainability.

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Software Development Life-cycle (SDLC)– “a structure imposed on the development of a software product. It is often considered a subset of systems development life cycle. There are several models for such processes, each describing approaches to a variety of tasks or activities” (Software development process, 2014).

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SWOT – “A structured planning method used to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats involved in a project or in a business venture” (“SWOT analysis,” n.d.).

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Work breakdown structure (WBS)– “A delieverable-oriented grouping of the work involved in a project that defines the total scope of the project”  (Schwalbe, 2010).

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