Pisces Glossary / References
Pisces Glossary / References
1. Pisces sections (Menu Items)
Each section of Pisces, and what it is used for. Sections marked admin-only are visible to administrators only.
| Section | Description |
|---|---|
| My Dashboard | Personal landing page showing your to-do list, daily Task Board, KPI tiles, My Queue, SLA Watch, recent activity, and configurable cards. |
| Messages | Internal staff chat for one-to-one and group conversations, including reactions, quoted replies, GIFs, and read receipts. Staff only. |
| Board | Kanban view of active Requests grouped by status. The primary daily workspace for claiming work and moving cards through the workflow. Includes a separate CIP board. |
| Requests | Searchable and filterable register of all Requests. Used for searching, bulk editing, and historical lookups. |
| Meetings | Dedicated workspace for meeting-type Requests, including agendas, attendees, live capture, and follow-up emails. |
| Sprints | Plan work within fixed time-boxed periods. Create sprints, set capacity, select Requests from the backlog, and track burndown, pace, and velocity. |
| Releases | Group sprints into a structured testing and deployment pipeline: Internal → UAT → QA Deploy → PROD Deploy → Released. |
| Activity | Admin-only view of staff hours logged, organised by week from Monday to Sunday, covering eight weeks at a time. Shows each person’s share of the team’s hours. |
| Analytics | Admin-only reporting on cycle time, estimate accuracy, rework rate, and individual Request lifecycle details. |
| Contacts | Lightweight CRM for individuals associated with clients or prospects. Supports contact tags and email campaign opt-out tracking. |
| Marketing | Workspace for composing and sending email campaigns. |
| Materials | Asset library for client-facing files, brand kits, and shared documents. |
| Reports | Reporting on hours logged, billable hours, Requests submitted, and SLA compliance, either by client or across all clients. |
| Roadmap | View planned and in-progress features grouped by quarter. Can optionally be shared with clients through the client portal. |
| Sales Velocity | Track sales opportunities through the pipeline stages, from Lead to Won or Lost. |
| Templates | Manage pre-filled Request templates, which also serve as canned responses in the comment box. Available to all staff. |
| Billing | Manage invoices, including drafting, sending, marking as paid, and exporting invoice data to CSV. |
| Clients | Manage client records, including SLA tiers, rates, email domains, and logos. |
| Commercials | Store and manage agreements, contracts, Statements of Work (SOWs), and order forms. |
| Logs | Admin-only audit log recording database changes for traceability and accountability. |
| Permissions | Admin-only, read-only matrix showing what each user role is permitted to do. |
| Tags | Manage contact tags for all staff and Request Labels for administrators. |
| Users | Invite, edit, and deactivate users, and configure their roles, product access, and client associations. |
| CIPs | Manage Continuous Improvement Process documents, including proposals and change controls linked to Requests. Accessed through the CIP board or a Request. |
| Settings | Manage personal preferences and tenant-level settings, including estimate types and thresholds. |
| Manual | Staff documentation and user manual for Pisces. |
2. Key terminology
Terms used in Pisces and across Project Surefire documentation. Use them consistently in Requests, CIPs and all product documentation.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Request | A tracked item of work in Pisces. It may represent a support query, task, meeting, product improvement, or formal change request. |
| CIP (Continuous Improvement Process) | A formal document used to record improvement proposals and change controls associated with Requests. |
| Kanban board | A visual representation of work, displayed as cards grouped into workflow statuses. It helps teams see progress and identify outstanding work. |
| Backlog | A collection of Requests awaiting selection and allocation to a sprint or future period of work. |
| Sprint | A fixed time-boxed period during which a team plans and works on a selected set of Requests. |
| Sprint capacity | The amount of work a team expects to complete during a sprint, based on available time and resources. |
| Burndown | A measure of remaining work throughout a sprint, used to assess progress against the planned workload. |
| Pace | An indication of how quickly work is progressing relative to the sprint plan or expected delivery rate. |
| Velocity | A measure of the amount of work completed over a sprint, used to inform future planning. |
| Release | A managed collection of work progressing through testing, deployment, and release stages. |
| Release pipeline | The sequence of stages through which a release progresses: Internal, UAT, QA Deploy, PROD Deploy, and Released. |
| UAT (User Acceptance Testing) | Testing performed to confirm that a solution meets the users’ and business’s requirements before acceptance. |
| QA (Quality Assurance) | Activities and testing used to verify that a solution meets the required quality and functional standards. |
| PROD (Production) | The live environment in which the released product or functionality is used operationally. |
| SLA (Service Level Agreement) | Agreed service commitments, such as response and resolution targets, used to measure service performance. |
| KPI (Key Performance Indicator) | A measurable indicator used to monitor performance against a defined objective or target. |
| Cycle time | The time taken for a Request to progress through the relevant stages of work, according to the system’s measurement rules. |
| Estimate accuracy | A measure of how closely the estimated effort or duration matches the actual effort or duration recorded. |
| Rework rate | An indicator of how much work requires revisiting or correcting after an earlier attempt or completion. |
| Request Label | A classification applied to a Request to help organise, identify, or filter work. |
| Contact tag | A classification applied to a contact record to support organisation and filtering. |
| CRM (Customer Relationship Management) | A system or process for maintaining information about clients, prospects, and their associated contacts. |
| Audit log | A chronological record of system changes used to support traceability, accountability, and investigation. |
| Template | A pre-filled structure used to standardise Request creation or provide a reusable response to a comment. |
| Canned response | A predefined response that staff can reuse when replying to common questions or situations. |
| SOW (Statement of Work) | A document defining the scope, deliverables, responsibilities, and terms of a piece of work. |
| Billable hours | Time recorded against work that may be charged to a client under the applicable commercial agreement. |
| Sales pipeline | The stages through which a sales opportunity progresses, from initial lead to a final outcome such as Won or Lost. |
| Roadmap | A forward-looking view of planned and in-progress product features, usually organised by expected delivery period. |
| Tenant | The organisation-specific Pisces environment containing its own users, settings, and operational data. |
| Role-based permissions | Access controls that determine which actions and information a user can access based on their assigned role. |
| Client portal | An external-facing interface through which clients may access selected information made available to them. |
| Contact opt-out | A record indicating that a contact has opted out of receiving relevant marketing communications. |
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