Top 5 Information Technology Abbreviations You Must Know

There are a lot of technical terms thrown around nowadays and if you are not a tech guru it could be hard to keep up. Since new ideas are being born every day and later turned into new technologies, the list of terms is bound to grow. In order to assist you with deciphering some of the terms, we prepared a cheat sheet of the most common technological acronyms so you can stay in the know about the most important terms in IT. This list is intended for non-technical C-Suite executives who are looking to stay on top of the technical terms and abbreviations being thrown around. 

Technology Abbreviations 

1. Application Programming Interface (API) – This term tops our IT acronym list because it is used by developers to determine how one aspect of the software should interact with another one. Think of it as a Lego construction. A good API will tell the developer what each aspect of the software does and then it is up to the developer to put it all together. Having good API documentation is also helpful since it makes it easier for other apps to integrate with yours. While the API is usually written in JavaScript Notational Language or JSON, the documentation can be something as simple as a PDF with Comma Separated Values (CSV).
2. Software Development Kit (SDK) – This is all off of the instruments located inside a developer’s toolbox that are needed to develop an application. Each development platform requires its own SDK. For example, if you are developing on iOS, you will need an iOS SDK, if you are developing for Android, you will need an Android one. A lot of the toolkits will come with their own library which is an aggregation of subroutines used to build the software and the source code. 
3. Representational State Transfer (REST) – This is one of the styles of developing web services. Developers enjoy working with it because it is very easy to use and builds on the current features of the web’s HTTP. A lot of REST plugins use Extensible Markup Language or XML to expose services as REST APIs.
4. Continuous Integration/ContinuousDelivery (CI/CD) – These two terms are the goal of DevOps, which allows developers to create software faster and more efficiently. In fact, CI/CD is more of a culture that allows development teams to deliver changes to the code more reliable. Also, by having a CI/CD framework you can lower the cost of software production, lower any risks involved and allow you to react faster to the demands of your customers.  
5. Minimum Viable Product (MVP) – This is the absolute basic prototype of your product that is built and then tested to see whether it has what it takes to succeed. This is necessary to confirm a fact that there is enough demand from the users for your product. Based on this testing you will determine if there is worth taking the product all the way to the endpoint.

This IT acronym list can be very useful to you when conducting negotiations with a service provider. Whenever you hire a software development team to build your software, you should ask them about your API, which SDK they will use, can they build an MVP and any other questions that will affect the usability of your app. Even though you have technical people who may be conducting the negotiations, you still have to be knowledgeable about these things because all technical work must be based on sound business principles. For example, if you notice that during the course of the negotiations API is being talked about as an afterthought, you need to jump in and explain that having a great API is an absolute must from the business standpoint since it increases the usability of your app.  

Even though it takes time to learn all of the ins and outs of these terms, it requires a minimal amount of effort to simply become acquainted with them and to be able to talk knowledgeably about them. So, when you hire software development team and during meetings with your technical team(s) or service providers, you have to at least know the definitions of these terms since it is not efficient to discuss abbreviations of computer terms. Also, a lot of times people will give you the runaround or a tongue in cheek answer to a certain question and you have to be able to tell that someone is not giving you all of the necessary information. You may be able to rely on the expertise of the people around you, but this only goes so far. As a client and decision maker, you will have to know at least some of the technical details in order to make a broader decision about the business possibilities of a product and getting to know some of the common IT acronyms is a very good start.