IT management

IT career paths

• What is a CVO (chief visionary officer)?

  The CVO (chief visionary officer) is a newer C-suite title where the holder is expected to have a broad and comprehensive knowledge of all matters related to the business of the organization, as well as the vision required to steer its course into the future.

• What is a balanced scorecard and how does the methodology work?

  The balanced scorecard is a management system aimed at translating an organization's strategic goals into a set of organizational performance objectives that, in turn, are measured, monitored, and changed, if necessary, to ensure that organizational goals are met.

• What is Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) certification?

  Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) certification is a series of technical certifications for senior networking professionals who design, build, implement, maintain and troubleshoot complex enterprise networking infrastructures.

IT Operations

Terms related to the processes and services implemented and managed by an organization’s information technology (IT) department. Topics covered include systems management, configuration management, API management and DevOps, as well as real-time performance monitoring and management.

• What is nearshore outsourcing and how does it work?

  Nearshore outsourcing is the practice of getting work done or services performed by people in neighboring countries rather than an organization's own country.

• What is cloud orchestration (cloud orchestrator)?

  Cloud orchestration (cloud orchestrator) is the use of programming technology to manage the interconnections and interactions among workloads on public and private cloud infrastructure.

• What is network automation?

  Network automation is a process that uses intelligent software to automate the management, configuration, deployment, testing and operation of both physical and virtual devices.

Personal computing

Terms related to personal computers, including definitions about computers sold as consumer products and words and phrases about laptops, tablets and smartphones.

• What is HTTP and how does it work? Hypertext Transfer Protocol

  HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is the set of rules for transferring files -- such as text, images, sound, video and other multimedia files -- over the web.

• Facebook

  Facebook is a social networking website that was founded in February 2004 by Harvard University students Chris Hughes, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg.

• What is ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)?

  ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is the most common character encoding format for text data in computers and on the internet.

Project management

Terms related to project management, including definitions about project management methodologies and tools.

• What is Six Sigma and how does it work?

  Six Sigma is a business methodology for quality improvement that measures how many defects there are in a current process and seeks to systematically eliminate them.

• What is a request for proposal (RFP)?

  A request for proposal (RFP) is a document an organization uses when it's searching for a product or service to meet specific requirements. The organization posts an RFP to elicit formal bids from vendors.

• What is a software requirements specification (SRS)?

  A software requirements specification (SRS) is a comprehensive description of the intended purpose and environment for software under development.

Technical support

Terms related to computer fundamentals, including computer hardware definitions and words and phrases about software, operating systems, peripherals and troubleshooting.

• What is DOS (Disk Operating System)?

  A DOS, or disk operating system, is an operating system (OS) that runs from a disk drive. The term can also refer to a particular family of disk operating systems, most commonly MS-DOS (Microsoft DOS).

• What is nearshore outsourcing and how does it work?

  Nearshore outsourcing is the practice of getting work done or services performed by people in neighboring countries rather than an organization's own country.

• What is read-only memory (ROM)?

  Read-only memory, or ROM, is a type of computer storage containing non-volatile, permanent data that normally can only be read, not written to.