Artifact: Glossary
This artifact defines important terms used by the project. The collection of terms clarifies the vocabulary used on the project.
Domains: Requirements
Purpose

The purposes of this artifact are:

  • To record the terms that are being used on the project so that everyone has a common understanding of them
  • To achieve consistency by promoting the use of common terminology across the project
  • To make explicit different stakeholders' use of the same terms to mean different things or different terms to mean the same thing
  • To provide important terms to the analysis and design team.
Relationships
Fulfilled Slots
RolesResponsible: Modified By:
TasksInput To:
Output From:
Description
Main Description

This artifact helps you avoid miscommunication by providing two essential resources:

  • A central location to look for terms and abbreviations that are new to development team members
  • Definitions of terms that are used in specific ways within the domain

Definitions for the glossary terms come from several sources, such as requirements documents, specifications, and discussions with stakeholders and domain experts.

Brief Outline

A project glossary defines the terms used during all phases of the project. There is a short definition for each term.

Key Considerations

Although listed as an output from, and an input to tasks associated with the requirements discipline, this artifact can be updated at any time, by any role, as new terms are identified.

The terms defined in here should be used according to the recorded definitions in all project documentation so that all stakeholders can clearly see that terms are being used consistently.

One of the primary decisions when developing this artifact is whether to have all terms in a single glossary, or to maintain terms in a number of glossaries, business terms artifacts and/or models. If terms are defined in multiple places, you need to communicate all these sources to the team and decide which take precedence.

It may be important, even in small projects, to reference and use existing broader glossaries, business terms artifacts or data models, where they exist.

Industry and organizational-wide glossaries may be referenced and compliance with such specific chosen standards may be required.

Tailoring
Impact of not havingMisunderstandings about the meanings of data items account for many failed projects. Increased costs and delayed schedules are associated with projects which lack a common understanding of the terms being used.
Reasons for not needing

On small projects (for example, enhancement projects), which are comprised of a team very familiar with the terms, this artifact may be omitted.

If a project team has access to the glossary terms in some other form, this artifact may be disregarded.  
Representation Options

This is a simple alphabetized listing of domain terms and their definitions. It can be captured in a spreadsheet, document, or published on a Wiki site to simplify access and maintenance.

This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the
Eclipse Public License v1.0 which accompanies this distribution.

OpenUP Copyright.