One of my pet peeve's in the software world is how much we all use abbreviations. Technical or non-technical. Seems half the time we don't even know what they mean.
I've put together a reasonably complete list here of the most common ones the industry seems to use too much.
We actually walk through and explain a bunch of these in the most recent episode of our podcast — Iteration, a podcast about software development and design.
Comment below with essential ones I've missed or gotten wrong. Might turn this into a Github repo so we can try to get a source of truth around this insanity.
Technical / General Software
- CROn: Command ron on
- URL: Uniform Resource Locator
- TTL: Time to Live — Example a cache's TTL
- DOM: Document Object Model
- HTML: Hypertext Markup Language
- CLI: Command Line Interface (CLI)
- API: Application Program Interface (API)
- TDD: Test Driven Development
- CI: Continuous Integration (CI)
- UX: User Experience
- UI: User Interface
- CSS: Cascading Style Sheets
- IDE: Integrated Development Environment
- FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
- TLD (Top Level Domain) (.com, .net, .car)
- SSO Single Sign On
- JS: JavaScript
- AJAX Asynchronous JavaScript and XML
- GUID Global Unique Identifier
- GUI Graphical User Interface
- OOP Object Oriented Programming
- ORM Object Relational Mapping
- DSL: Domain Specific Language
- REGEX Regular Expression
- PHP Personal Home Page/PHP Hypertext Preprocessor
- REST Representational State Transfer
- SDK Software Development Kit
- SQL Structured Query Language
- XML Extensible Markup Language
- 2FA: Two factor authentication
- DNS: Domain Name Servers
- Web RTC — web real time communications
- FOSS — Free Open Source Software
- WYSIWYG: What you see is what you get
- JSON - JavaScript Object Notation
- TS: Type Script
- POC : Proof of Concept
Marketing / Sales
- CTA: CTA: Call-to-Action
- CTR: Click-through Rate
- CPL: Cost Per Lead
- CPA: Cost per Action
- CPC: Cost per click
- PPC Pay per click
- CR: Conversion Rate
- CRO: Conversion Rate Optimization
- CMS: Content Management System
- PDP: Product Detail Page
- PLP: Product Listing Page
- SEO: Search Engine Optimization
- SEM: Search Engine Marketing
- SMM: Social Media Marketing
- MAP (Marketing Automation Platform)
- MQL: Marketing Qualified Leads
- LPO (Landing Page Optimization)
Business Terms
- KPI: Key Performance Indicators
- OKR: Objective Key Results
- RFP: Request for Proposal
- IC: Individual contributor
- P/E - Price-to-earnings ratio (How much does the stock cost vs how much does the company earn?)
- P&L - Profit and Loss — How much money comes in the door and what they lost to get it
- ROI - Return on Investment
- WC - Working Capital (Liquid money to spend)
- B2B - Business to Business
- B2C - Business to Consumer
- D2C - direct to consumer
- BD - Business Development
- QA - Quality Assurance
- YTD: Year to Date
- CRM: Customer Relationship Management
- MOM: Month over Month (compares a metric over to previous month)
- SAAS Software as a Service
- ERP Enterprise Resource Planning
- EPD — Engineering Product and Design
- NDA Non-Disclosure Agreement
- YoY Year On Year (compares a metric over to previous year)
- RDD Requirements Definition Document
- PRD Product Requirements Definition
- RFQ : Request for Quotation
- RFI : Request for Information
- PO : Purchase Order
- WO : Work Order
- SKU : Stock Keeping Unit
Top comments (14)
Also a really important one is TMA: Too Many Acronyms.
Pro-tip: always try to avoid using acronyms. When you do, define it on first usage.
Couldn't agree more — God the overuse of acronyms is so frustrating. I try to always write it out at least once before using it, even casually in slack every new context.
Something like:
My favourite is TITSUP, Total Inability To Support Usual Performance
It is great to have such a list in a commonplace. You can also consider adding the below item in your list,
JSON - JavaScript Object Notation
Typo mistakes to be fixed,
WSYWG -> WYSIWYG
CPP -> CPC: Cost per Click
CRT -> CTR - Click Through Ratio
Fixed ✔️
Thanks!
Cron isn't actually an acroynm, it gets its name originally from the Greek personification of time Chronus. This makes sense, as cron is a tool for running tasks at chronological intervals.
you put CRO two times but awesome bro.
really helpful..
Fixed — thanks ✔
Added — thanks ✌️
You can also add:
KT - Knowledge Transfer
ETA - Estimated Time of Arrival
You can include these also :
POC : Proof of Concept
RFQ : Request for Quotation
RFI : Request for Information
PO : Purchase Order
WO : Work Order
SKU : Stock Keeping Unit
Added — thanks!
Am I the only one bothered by the column inconsistency?