Employees are leaders, designers, artists, programmers, support, lawyers or accountants. People who are occupied with directly adding value to the company. Employees will spend their day sitting at a computer to work.

The term differentiates itself from staff, who are occupied with keeping operations running smoothly so the employees can work, e.g. cleaners, cooks, maintenance, etc.

A design can refer to 2 things:

• The design of product, i.e. what it should do, how it should be constructed, etc. Usually comes in the form of a design document
• Hardware design, which is the final physical look of a piece of hardware

Unless hardware is specifically used, design will refer to the first of these 2, e.g. a description of how a product should work and be constructed.

Projects refer to a product that is being created, but is not yet finished.

This is the final output of a company. It can either be a hardware or software product. Before the product is finished, it is referred to as a project still, as it may never come to fruition.

Development refers to the entire process of creating a product, from the design phase to the alpha phase and finally the beta phase.