K & R

Kernighan and Ritchie

Brian Wilson Kernighan is a Canadian computer scientist who worked at Bell Labs alongside Unix creators Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie and contributed to the development of Unix. He is also coauthor of the AWK and AMPL programming languages. The "K" of K&R C and the "K" in AWK both stand for "Kernighan".
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie was an American computer scientist. He created the C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the Unix operating system.

K & R C

In 1978, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie published the first edition of The C Programming Language. This book, known to C programmers as "K&R", served for many years as an informal specification of the language. The version of C that it describes is commonly referred to as K&R C. The second edition of the book covers the later ANSI C standard, described below.

K & R indent style

The K&R style is commonly used in C, C++, and other curly brace programming languages. Used in Kernighan and Ritchie's book The C Programming Language, it had its origins in Kernighan and Plauger's The Elements of Programming Style.
 
When following K&R, each function has its opening brace at the next line on the same indentation level as its header, the statements within the braces are indented, and the closing brace at the end is on the same indentation level as the header of the function at a line of its own.
 
The blocks inside a function, however, have their opening braces at the same line as their respective control statements; closing braces remain in a line of their own, unless followed by a keyword else or while. Such non-aligned braces are nicknamed "Egyptian braces" (or "Egyptian brackets") for their resemblance to arms in some fanciful poses of ancient Egyptians.
 
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
...
while (x == y) {
something();
somethingelse();
 
if (some_error)
do_correct();
else
continue_as_usual();
}
 
finalthing();
...
}

Kanban

a method for managing work, with an emphasis on just-in-time delivery. The Kanban Method is a means to design, manage and improve flow for knowledge work and allows teams to start where they are to drive evolutionary change.
 

Kanban Board

A Kanban Board is a visual workflow tool consisting of multiple columns. Each column represents a different stage in the workflow process.

 

Kerberos

Kerberos is a computer network authentication protocol that works on the basis of tickets to allow nodes communicating over a non-secure network to prove their identity to one another in a secure manner. The protocol was named after the character Kerberos (or Cerberus) from Greek mythology, the ferocious three-headed guard dog of Hades. Its designers aimed it primarily at a client–server model and it provides mutual authentication—both the user and the server verify each other's identity. Kerberos protocol messages are protected against eavesdropping and replay attacks.
 
Kerberos builds on symmetric key cryptography and requires a trusted third party, and optionally may use public-key cryptography during certain phases of authentication. Kerberos uses UDP port 88 by default.

Kernel

The kernel is a computer program that is the core of a computer's operating system, with complete control over everything in the system. On most systems, it is one of the first programs loaded on start-up (after the bootloader). It handles the rest of start-up as well as input/output requests from software, translating them into data-processing instructions for the central processing unit. It handles memory and peripherals like keyboards, monitors, printers, and speakers.
 
The critical code of the kernel is usually loaded into a separate area of memory, which is protected from access by application programs or other, less critical parts of the operating system. The kernel performs its tasks, such as running processes, managing hardware devices such as the hard disk, and handling interrupts, in this protected kernel space. In contrast, everything a user does is in user space: writing text in a text editor, running programs in a GUI, etc. This separation prevents user data and kernel data from interfering with each other and causing instability and slowness, as well as preventing malfunctioning application programs from crashing the entire operating system.
 
The kernel's interface is a low-level abstraction layer. When a process makes requests of the kernel, it is called a system call. Kernel designs differ in how they manage these system calls and resources. A monolithic kernel runs all the operating system instructions in the same address space for speed. A microkernel runs most processes in user space, for modularity.

 

KISS Principle

Keep It Simple, Stupid

the principle that people want products that are easy to learn and use, and that companies realize time and cost benefits by producing such products.

Knowledge Management

KM

A mechanism or method of retaining, reusing, and providing people with useful and relevant information.

KPI

Key Performance Indicator

A performance indicator or key performance indicator (KPI) is a type of performance measurement. KPIs evaluate the success of an organization or of a particular activity (such as projects, programs, products and other initiatives) in which it engages.
 
Often success is simply the repeated, periodic achievement of some levels of operational goal (e.g. zero defects, 10/10 customer satisfaction, etc.), and sometimes success is defined in terms of making progress toward strategic goals. Accordingly, choosing the right KPIs relies upon a good understanding of what is important to the organization.[citation needed] What is deemed important often depends on the department measuring the performance – e.g. the KPIs useful to finance will differ from the KPIs assigned to sales.
 
Since there is a need to understand well what is important, various techniques to assess the present state of the business, and its key activities, are associated with the selection of performance indicators. These assessments often lead to the identification of potential improvements, so performance indicators are routinely associated with 'performance improvement' initiatives. A very common way to choose KPIs is to apply a management framework such as the balanced scorecard.

ksh

KornShell (ksh) is a Unix shell which was developed by David Korn at Bell Labs in the early 1980s and announced at USENIX on July 14, 1983. The initial development was based on Bourne shell source code. Other early contributors were Bell Labs developers Mike Veach and Pat Sullivan, who wrote the Emacs and vi-style line editing modes' code, respectively. KornShell is backward-compatible with the Bourne shell and includes many features of the C shell, inspired by the requests of Bell Labs users