The operations glossary

A backlog is a prioritised list of work still to be done, from which a team pulls the next most important items to deliver.

A bottleneck is the point in a process where work piles up because the flow through it is slower than the demand on it, capping the pace of everything downstream.

Business operations is everything involved in how a company actually delivers its product or service day to day: its processes, systems, people, and the coordination between them.

Capacity planning is matching the work a business has committed to against the people and time available to deliver it, so nothing is over- or under-loaded.

Continuous improvement is the practice of steadily refining how a business operates through small, regular changes rather than occasional big overhauls.

Decision rights define who has the authority to make which decisions, and at what level, without needing to escalate.

A delivery model is the defined way a business takes work from start to finish: how projects are staffed, run, and handed over, consistently, regardless of who is involved.

ERP is software that unifies a company's core operations, finance, inventory, orders, HR and more, into a single connected system and database.

The founder bottleneck is when a business depends so heavily on its founder that decisions, context and quality all route through one person, capping how fast it can grow.

A fractional COO is a senior operations leader who runs how a business operates on a part-time basis, usually a few days a month, instead of as a full-time hire.

A fractional executive is a senior leader (COO, CFO, CMO and so on) who works with a business part-time, sharing their time across a small number of clients.

A fractional PM is a senior project or delivery leader who works part-time to make sure a team's important work actually ships, without being a full-time hire.

An interim COO is a full-time, temporary operations leader brought in to cover a gap or lead a specific transition, usually for a fixed period.

Knowledge transfer is the deliberate handing over of the information, context and know-how needed to run a piece of work, so it does not depend on one person.

An operating model is how a business is organised to deliver its work: the combination of processes, structure, systems, and ways of working that turn inputs into outcomes.

An operating rhythm is the regular cadence of meetings, reviews and reporting a business runs on, built around the few numbers that matter most.

An operations audit is a time-boxed review of how work actually moves through a business, producing a prioritised list of what to fix, in what order, and why.

An operations director is the senior person accountable for how a business runs day to day: its processes, systems, and the delivery of its work.

Organisational structure is how a company arranges its people, roles, and reporting lines to get its work done and make decisions.

Process mapping is documenting the actual steps a piece of work goes through from start to finish, including the handoffs, decisions, and points where it stalls.

Process redesign is reworking how a business process operates to cut friction and rework, then giving each step a clear owner so the new way holds.

A RACI matrix maps who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed for each task or decision, removing ambiguity about ownership.

A retainer is an ongoing arrangement where a client pays a regular fee for a set amount of a professional's time or availability each month.

Scope creep is the gradual, unplanned expansion of a project's scope beyond what was originally agreed, usually without matching changes to time or budget.

A single source of truth is one authoritative place where a given piece of information officially lives, that every system and person reads from.

Span of control is the number of people who report directly to a single manager.

A standard operating procedure (SOP) is a documented, step-by-step description of how a specific task or process should be carried out.

A statement of work (SOW) is a document that defines exactly what a project will deliver: its scope, deliverables, timeline, and terms.

Systems integration is connecting separate software tools so they share data automatically, instead of people copying information between them by hand.

A tech stack is the set of software tools and systems a business uses to run its operations.

Tool sprawl is the uncontrolled growth of software tools across a business, leading to overlap, disconnected data, and manual work bridging the gaps.

Workflow automation is using software to carry out repetitive, rule-based steps in a process automatically, instead of relying on people to do them by hand.