A reference from Weave

Engineering & AI glossary

Understand the metrics, models, and methods behind modern engineering. Clear definitions, practical examples, and a closer look at what the numbers actually mean.

All terms

2,008 terms

  • Decision latency

    Decision latency is a way to organize, support, or evaluate software work so that teams can make useful progress with less avoidable friction. It is most valuable when connected to a concrete outcome and the local conditions of the team using it.

    Developer productivity

  • Decision log

    Decision log is a way to organize, support, or evaluate software work so that teams can make useful progress with less avoidable friction. It is most valuable when connected to a concrete outcome and the local conditions of the team using it.

    Developer productivity

  • Decision table testing

    Decision table testing is a software testing or test-design practice used to gather evidence about a defined risk, behavior, boundary, or operating condition. It makes the question under test explicit, identifies the inputs and observations that matter, and gives a team a repeatable basis for deciding whether the result is acceptable.

    Code quality and technical debt

  • Decision-making

    Decision-making is a way to organize, support, or evaluate software work so that teams can make useful progress with less avoidable friction. It is most valuable when connected to a concrete outcome and the local conditions of the team using it.

    Developer productivity

  • Declarative infrastructure

    Declarative infrastructure is a release engineering and DevOps concept for controlling how software changes are prepared, introduced, or understood.

    DORA and DevOps

  • Decode phase

    Decode phase is the serving concept concerned with decode phase during AI inference.

    Inference performance

  • Decoder-only model

    Decoder-only model is a language-model concept about training behavior and measurement. It names a mechanism, representation, training practice, or operational behavior that can change how an AI system processes input and produces output.

    LLM fundamentals

  • Deduplication

    Deduplication handles multiple records that represent one event or entity.

    Engineering analytics

  • Deep work

    Deep work is a way to organize, support, or evaluate software work so that teams can make useful progress with less avoidable friction. It is most valuable when connected to a concrete outcome and the local conditions of the team using it.

    Developer productivity

  • Defect density

    The number of confirmed defects relative to a defined amount of software or change.

    Code quality and technical debt

  • Defect removal efficiency

    The proportion of defects found and removed before release compared with defects found before and after release.

    Code quality and technical debt

  • Deferred maintenance

    Deferred maintenance is a software maintenance concern describing a condition that can make future changes, verification, operation, or ownership harder. Its practical importance depends on supported behavior, rate of change, and the consequences of delay.

    Code quality and technical debt

  • Definition drift

    Definition drift is an analytical risk or quality concern that can make an engineering analysis appear more certain, comparable, or causal than it is.

    Engineering analytics

  • Definition of done

    A definition of done is an explicit policy for the conditions a work item must satisfy before it is considered complete. It can include implementation, review, testing, documentation, security, and release requirements.

    Flow and capacity planning

  • Definition of ready

    Definition of ready is a way to organize, support, or evaluate software work so that teams can make useful progress with less avoidable friction. It is most valuable when connected to a concrete outcome and the local conditions of the team using it.

    Developer productivity

  • Degraded mode

    Degraded mode is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.

    Reliability and observability

  • Delayed data

    Delayed data is an analytical risk or quality concern that can make an engineering analysis appear more certain, comparable, or causal than it is.

    Engineering analytics

  • Delimiting

    Delimiting is a language-model concept about generation behavior and sampling. It names a mechanism, representation, prompting pattern, decoding control, or context behavior that can change how an AI system processes input and produces output.

    LLM fundamentals

  • Delivery age

    Delivery age is the time since a work item crossed a stated delivery start boundary while remaining unfinished. It is an active-work signal for intervention and forecasting.

    Flow and capacity planning

  • Delivery confidence

    Delivery confidence is a developer productivity concept that helps teams understand delivery confidence in the context of software delivery.

    Developer productivity

  • Delivery forecast

    Delivery forecast is a concept used in software delivery planning to describe a condition, relationship, estimate, or decision about engineering work.

    Flow and capacity planning

  • Delivery friction

    Delivery friction is avoidable difficulty that slows or complicates the movement of a software change from request to usable result. It can appear as waiting, unclear ownership, repeated handoffs, unreliable tools, difficult environments, or feedback that arrives too late to help.

    Developer productivity

  • Delivery pipeline

    Delivery pipeline is a software delivery concept used to describe a specific event, interval, control, or operating condition in the path from source change to production behavior. A useful definition names the boundary, unit, and decision the measure supports.

    DORA and DevOps

  • Delivery queue

    A delivery queue is unfinished work that has reached a downstream delivery boundary but is waiting for capacity, approval, environment, or a release decision. It makes post-implementation accumulation visible.

    Flow and capacity planning

  • Delivery slice

    Delivery slice is a way to organize, support, or evaluate software work so that teams can make useful progress with less avoidable friction. It is most valuable when connected to a concrete outcome and the local conditions of the team using it.

    Developer productivity

  • Delivery workflow definition

    Delivery workflow definition is a release engineering and DevOps concept for controlling how software changes are prepared, introduced, or understood.

    DORA and DevOps

  • Demand shaping

    Demand shaping is a concept used in software delivery planning to describe a condition, relationship, estimate, or decision about engineering work.

    Flow and capacity planning

  • Demand-capacity ratio

    A demand-capacity ratio compares a defined arrival rate or committed workload with the corresponding capacity or throughput of a delivery system. A ratio above one signals pressure under the stated assumptions, not a diagnosis by itself.

    Flow and capacity planning

  • Denoising autoencoding

    Denoising autoencoding is a language-model concept about mechanism and information flow. It names a mechanism, representation, training practice, or operational behavior that can change how an AI system processes input and produces output.

    LLM fundamentals

  • Denominator

    Denominator defines the reference population for a rate or ratio.

    Engineering analytics

  • Denominator drift

    Denominator drift is a statistical or measurement concept used to describe, compare, or interpret engineering data. Its meaning depends on the unit of analysis, data-generating process, and question being asked.

    Measurement and experimentation

  • Denominator stability

    Denominator stability is an analytical risk or quality concern that can make an engineering analysis appear more certain, comparable, or causal than it is.

    Engineering analytics

  • Dependency age

    Dependency age is a software maintenance concern describing a condition that can make future changes, verification, operation, or ownership harder. Its practical importance depends on supported behavior, rate of change, and the consequences of delay.

    Code quality and technical debt

  • Dependency constraint

    Dependency constraint is a concept used in software delivery planning to describe a condition, relationship, estimate, or decision about engineering work.

    Flow and capacity planning

  • Dependency contract

    Dependency contract is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.

    Reliability and observability

  • Dependency cycle

    A circular chain in which modules or packages depend on one another.

    Code quality and technical debt

  • Dependency failure

    Dependency failure is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.

    Reliability and observability

  • Dependency fan-in

    The number of components that depend on a given component.

    Code quality and technical debt

  • Dependency fan-out

    The number of components that a given component directly depends on.

    Code quality and technical debt

  • Dependency graph

    A graph showing how software modules, packages, or services depend on one another.

    Code quality and technical debt

  • Dependency graph density

    A measure of how many dependency relationships exist relative to the possible relationships in a graph.

    Code quality and technical debt

  • Dependency health

    Dependency health is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.

    Reliability and observability

  • Dependency inversion

    A design principle that places stable abstractions between high-level policy and volatile implementation details.

    Code quality and technical debt

  • Dependency isolation

    Dependency isolation is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.

    Reliability and observability

  • Dependency lead time

    Dependency lead time is a concept used in software delivery planning to describe a condition, relationship, estimate, or decision about engineering work.

    Flow and capacity planning

  • Dependency lockfile

    Dependency lockfile is a release engineering and DevOps concept for controlling how software changes are prepared, introduced, or understood.

    DORA and DevOps

  • Dependency management

    Dependency management is a software maintenance concern describing a condition that can make future changes, verification, operation, or ownership harder. Its practical importance depends on supported behavior, rate of change, and the consequences of delay.

    Code quality and technical debt

  • Dependency map

    Dependency map is a record of components that rely on one another and the behavior of those relationships.

    Reliability and observability

  • Dependency mapping

    Dependency mapping is a concept used in software delivery planning to describe a condition, relationship, estimate, or decision about engineering work.

    Flow and capacity planning

  • Dependency pinning

    Dependency pinning is a software maintenance concern describing a condition that can make future changes, verification, operation, or ownership harder. Its practical importance depends on supported behavior, rate of change, and the consequences of delay.

    Code quality and technical debt