Terminology (2)

Talking to the BCS about whether BCS needs a BCS

Writing my previous post about Information Lifecycle Management and listening to some of the presentations at various events, it reminded me of a continuous frustration of someone who has been working for various hardware and software manufacturers for the last 15 years: The use of Terminology !

Just last week at an end-user conference I was listening to some of the foremost German consultants within the DMS and ECM space talk to a large number of end-users. A quick question around showed one thing: half of our listeners didn't understand what we were talking about. Not from a technical perspective, but the acronyms, TLA (Three letter Acronyms) and ETLAs (Extended Three Letter Acronyms) that are so prevalent in our industry.

Why not keep it simple, clear and less confusing... especially lets stop making terms up just to differentiate our offering. We really do not need more abbreviations, but instead more commonsense clarity! It is something we have to spend a lot of time during our training to make our students understand.

...and for those of you wondering. It was the British Computer Society I was talking to about whether Basic Content Services need a Business Classification Scheme.

But I am sure the readers out there can come up with even more over the top abbreviations or descriptions from our industry. I am open to suggestions.

by Hanns Köhler-Krüner