Glossary

Every acronym and initialism used across these docs, plus the domain terms Tollgate relies on. If a term is used before it’s defined on a page, it’s defined here.

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.
KPI	Key Performance Indicator	A measure named in the business case and tested at realisation.
KVS	Key-Value Store	Forge’s simpler storage tier (used for some settings).
MATA	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.
P&L	Profit and Loss	The cashflow statement underlying the financial case.
PMO	Project / Programme Management Office	The function Tollgate serves — though Tollgate governs above PMO operations, at the investment altitude.
R/I/O	Risk / Issue / Opportunity	The combined register of open risks, opportunities, and materialised risks. An issue is a risk that has 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.
SAM	Softwired Above-the-Line Methodology	The investment-governance methodology Tollgate implements: Commit / Run / Evaluate, across six lifecycle stages. See The SAM methodology.

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.
Close-out	The lifecycle stage that captures the as-built outcome and return, residual risks, lessons, and BAU handover.
Commit / Run / Evaluate	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.
Financial case	The forward-looking P&L for an investment, from which NPV, IRR and payback are computed.
Forge	Atlassian’s app platform that Tollgate is built on; it runs entirely on Atlassian infrastructure.
Gate / gating	A decision point an investment must pass — for example, business-case approval.
Investment Health	The per-project dashboard: RAG 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.
Jira Plan	An Advanced Roadmaps plan (a Jira Premium feature). Tollgate Portfolio reads its project list from a Plan.
Materialised risk	A risk that has actually occurred; it stops being a risk and is routed to a decision.
Realisation (Benefits Realisation)	The post-delivery stage where the outcome is judged — what we said beside what we got.
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.
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.