Glossary
Every acronym and initialism used across these docs, plus the domain terms Tollgate relies on. If a page uses a term before defining it, this page defines it.
Acronyms & initialisms
Section titled “Acronyms & initialisms”| Term | Stands for | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| ADR | Architecture Decision Record | An internal record of a significant technical decision (referenced in the storage docs). |
| BAU | Business As Usual | The ongoing operational running of what an investment delivered, after close-out and handover. |
| BCM | Business Change Management | The adoption-and-change discipline. The BCM (adoption) quartet is the one hard gate at business-case submission. |
| CES | Custom Entity Store | The Forge storage mechanism Tollgate uses for its higher-volume records. |
| DPA | Data Processing Agreement | The contract governing how Tollgate processes a customer’s data. |
| GDPR | General Data Protection Regulation | EU/UK data-protection law. Tollgate supports data-deletion (right-to-be-forgotten) flows. |
| IRR | Internal Rate of Return | The discount rate at which an investment’s net present value is zero. Part of the financial case. See How to write a business case. |
| KPI | Key Performance Indicator | A measure named in the business case and tested at realisation. See How to write a business case. |
| KVS | Key-Value Store | Forge’s simpler storage tier (used for some settings). |
| Risk treatments | Mitigate, Avoid, Transfer, Accept | The four risk-treatment strategies. (Opportunities use Pursue, Enhance, Share, Ignore.) |
| NPV | Net Present Value | The present value of an investment’s projected cashflows, less its cost. Part of the financial case. See How to write a business case. |
| P&L | Profit and Loss | The cashflow statement underlying the financial case. See Capex and opex for technology investments. |
| PMO | Project / Programme Management Office | The function Tollgate serves — though Tollgate governs above PMO operations, at the investment altitude. See What is project governance?. |
| R/I/O | Risk / Issue / Opportunity | The combined register of open risks, opportunities, and materialised risks. An issue is a risk that occurred. |
| RAG | Red / Amber / Green | The traffic-light status rating shown on Investment Health. |
| ROI | Return on Investment | The payoff an investment is funded for. In Tollgate it’s expressed as NPV, IRR and payback in the financial case — a target and benchmark, not a live score the tool tracks. See How to write a business case. |
| SAM | Softwired Above-the-Line Methodology | The investment-governance methodology Tollgate implements: Commit / Run / Realise, across six lifecycle stages. See The SAM methodology. |
Key terms
Section titled “Key terms”| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Above the line | The altitude of investment governance — the people answerable for the money — as opposed to below the line (delivery execution). |
| Business Case | The funded case for an investment: problem, target outcome, expected return, decision authority and steering committee. See How to write a business case. |
| Capex / opex | Capital expenditure creates an asset written down over several periods; operating expenditure is charged to the period it is incurred. The split changes who approves the spend and how the return models. See Capex and opex for technology investments. |
| Close-out | The lifecycle stage that captures the as-built outcome and return, residual risks, lessons, and BAU handover. See What is a stage gate?. |
| Commit / Run / Realise | The three acts of SAM that the six lifecycle stages map onto. |
| Confidence (Outcome / Adoption) | Self-reported confidence axes shown alongside RAG on Investment Health. |
| Design principle | A decision rule agreed before the work starts that settles a class of future trade-offs in advance. See Design principles in the business case. |
| Financial case | The forward-looking P&L for an investment, from which NPV, IRR and payback are computed. |
| Forge | Atlassian’s app platform. Tollgate runs entirely on Atlassian infrastructure. |
| Gate / gating | A decision point an investment must pass — for example, business-case approval. See What is a stage gate?. |
| Investment Health | The per-project dashboard: status cards, confidence axes, decisions needed, and register pull-throughs. |
| Investment Thesis | The core of the business case — the problem, the target outcome, and the expected return. See How to write a business case. |
| Jira Plan | An Advanced Roadmaps plan (a Jira Premium feature). Tollgate Portfolio reads its project list from a Plan. |
| Materialised risk | A risk that occurred. It stops being a risk and routes to a decision. |
| Realisation (Benefits Realisation) | The post-delivery stage where the outcome is judged — what we said beside what we got. See Investment governance, and what it asks that project governance doesn’t. |
| Rovo | Atlassian’s AI layer. Ask Tollgate is a Rovo agent that answers from your governance data. |
| Steering committee (steerco) | The body accountable for governing an investment. See What is project governance?. |
| Tollgate Portfolio | The cross-project rollup surface (needs a Jira Plan / Jira Premium). |
| Work Package | Tollgate’s app-native unit of governed delivery — not a Jira issue type. |