Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

Thinking things through is always important in business. Thinking through your acronyms is VERY important! I am often amused and amazed by some of the acronyms we end up with at work. “Acronym rich” and “alphabet soup” do not suffice to describe the nightmare sea of letters we navigate. You can see the lost acronyms float across the eyes of new team members as the gloss over after trying to decipher a sentence comprised entirely of shot-gunned letters. What’s worse is that sometimes it’s very hard to undo the acronyms when asked. Conceptually, I can explain to you what an “IPT” is, but I always forget what each letter actually stands for. To add insult to injury, in many places I’ve worked, the acronyms shift from functional area to functional area, some of them overlap. At a previous job, what I thought of as “QM” (quiz module) was not what our development team thought of as “QM” (quiz management) and was certainly not what corporate thought of as “QM” (quality management).

And then there are the people so desperate to shorten everything that we end up with acronyms that spell hilarious or inappropriate words. “F/u” is a favorite I see flying by quite a bit. My job title is abbreviated to PMM but could have easily been PMS. BM is not the best acronym for an online test system, WTPS echoes “TPS reports” of Office Space fame, and the list goes on… The worst I saw was a Customer Notification Tracker…

I think every company should have a Keeper of the Acronyms. Perhaps with a crown and scepter just for effect. This person would maintain the Acronym Translation System, a wiki-based rosetta stone for the secret lingo of the company, as well as settle any problems with disputed territory. Wouldn’t that solve so many problems?

Okay, perhaps some overlapping acronyms are necessary - but the Keeper of the Acronyms could raise awareness for these overlaps and enable better communication. Ideally when one team talks about SOWs to another team, everyone’s on the same page (SOW = statement of work, a fairly standard one for us) and no one’s thinking about bacon.

tags: acronyms, comics, silly, user friendly