At Stoneseed, we recently shared some IT Project Management “buzz word bingo cards” on our socials, the things that you might hear (or say) while managing and delivering projects!
… “on a journey”, “strategic imperatives”, “thought leadership”, and plenty of others to check off across your day working in IT Project Management!
I just hope you didn’t get to shout “HOUSE”! That would have been a day from project management hell!
It was just a bit of fun, thanks for playing along and for the feedback saying we made you smile!
More fun with 12 IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT BUZZ-TERMS AND WHAT THEY MEAN (not) at the end of this post!
There’s a semi-serious point here though.
STRAIGHT-TALK
At Stoneseed, we have published seven “STRAIGHT TALK ON PROJECT MANAGEMENT” e-books. Each volume is crammed with blogs from across the last decade, you may even be reading this blog in Volume 8 – who knows!!
Among my favourite lines of feedback has been this: “Content is always … straightforward and doesn’t try to bamboozle readers with buzz words and clever tricks.”
Nice! Job done!!!!
Now, I dare say a few buzz words may have crept in over the years, but generally we have tried to avoid inside-cliches and project-talk, and the same has been true of our approach to IT Project Management services and advisory over the (more than 15) years that Stoneseed has been in business.
When we set Stoneseed up, our mission was to always be on the side of our client and that means talking your language, not ours.
By the way, I get it. When you live and breathe project management, it can be hard to drop the lingo. A PM friend, Malcolm, is always being scolded by his wife for talking like a “project manager” at home. Once, he and Ellie were rushing to the railway station, they were running late and Malc talked about “the downstream impact” of missing their train. Apparently, the language Ellie used that day was nothing you’d find in your PMBOK!
So, you’re not alone if you slip into work vernacular, even when you are not staring at a Gantt chart – don’t hang your head in shame if you’ve used some of these buzzwords, sometimes it can feel harder to avoid them! They are “low-hanging fruit” 😉!!
… and really is there any harm in it?
Well, maybe!
WORD SALAD
Often, new clients tell me of the “not-so-straight-talk” they have experienced elsewhere, I’ve heard how they’ve nodded along politely to a word-salad of a sales pitch wondering what they were actually being sold, and one straight-talking CEO I know has stopped a project management services salesman mid-flow to ask him to “cut the bull” (sic). I believe the words “accountability matrix” were the tipping point! (It’s a list of who is responsible for each task in a project – so … why don’t we say that?
It seems that these days, every solution is “best-in-class” (by definition they can’t all be) or “game-changing” solutions (usually we don’t want the game changing, just to be better at it?) and what even are “value-added” services? The problem is that these words are ubiquitous, and as a result become meaningless!
Another client was previously offered “datafication” as a solution, using “bleeding-edge” (eeeeewww!) technology that had “baked-in modularity” … to be honest, even I don’t always understand some of the gobbledegook that finds its way into IT Project services proposals – let’s try to make everything as clear and accessible as possible.
Buzz words can also cause problems for teams, especially with remote project management becoming more commonplace. IT Project Comms need to be clear and quickly understood, the thing is though. even we don’t always talk the same language. Our Project Management as a Service talent get to work with a wide variety of teams across many industries and sectors and often share the nuances of project management speak.
You probably know “float” as the amount of time that a task can be delayed without affecting the project’s overall completion, but on a recent PMaaS engagement a colleague was at a team where “float” was the amount of petty cash that the project team had for “eventualities” – “slack” was their word for that project delay buffer. Chances are that “float” and “slack” are interchangeable terms for you, but it must have seemed off to this team that my colleague, effectively the new guy on the team, was asking about its petty cash – like he was planning very low-key heist!
PARADIGM SHIFT
Paradigm shift is a great example of a phrase that has become universal, and as a result somewhat diluted.
I first heard the term “paradigm shift” in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, and it jumped off the page.
Covey recounts riding the New York subway when a man and his boisterous children boarded the train. The children were disruptive, running about and disturbing the other passengers, while their father remained passive, seemingly unaware. Frustrated, Covey eventually confronted the man about managing his children, only for the father to explain that they had just come from hospital where their mother had died, leaving him, and them, unsure of how to cope with the situation.
This revelation immediately altered Covey’s perspective. Rather than feeling irritation, he experienced profound empathy, realising that the father’s apparent inaction was not due to negligence but stemmed from grief. The story underscores the importance of seeking to understand others before passing judgement, and it demonstrates how a paradigm shift, changing your perspective, can lead to greater compassion and more effective responses to situations.
I still recall the rather profound reaction I had reading this story for the first time; things are not always how you perceive them! It’s a lesson that has served me well across my career in project management, indeed, many of my proudest moments, lateral thinking insights, and innovations can be attributed back to this story.
This week, a friend told me how they’d switched from Waitrose to Lidl and enthused – “it’s literally a paradigm shift”. I mean, OK, it may be. To be fair their middle aisle is something else! I doubt though that Steven Covey’s story would have had the same impact on my career if, instead of his subway story, he’d written, “I came out with a bottle of pop, some mushrooms, and a canoe!”
In conclusion, when it comes to buzzwords, let’s make commit to omit … and instead just straight-talk like normal people!
3 COMMITMENTS TO PLAIN ENGLISH IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT
As an individual – Make a commitment to no longer use buzzwords, instead adopt direct, precise, clear, persuasive language.
As a manager – Be a shining example of clear communication and hold your team accountable for communicating clearly. Set the bar!
As a leader – Challenge the buzzword culture in your company or organisation, be on the look-out for jargon-loaded communication and inspire others to straight talk!
FINALLY, A BIT MORE FUN …
12 IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT BUZZ-TERMS AND WHAT THEY MEAN (not)
1 – Change Management – The practice of looking after the pennies so the pounds look after themselves.
2 – Closing Phase – Last orders at the bar.
3 – Critical Path – the corridor in your office that passes judgemental colleagues.
4 – Cross-Functional Team – A team composed of competent, but always angry members.
5 – Dependencies – Whatever it takes to get you through the day! (Mine are coffee and biscuits).
6 – Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) – Stocking up before taking off in Star Trek.
7 – Risk Appetite – That Friday night kebab.
8 – Rolling Wave Planning – Dreaming of your holiday while working on a mundane task on a grey November afternoon.
9 – Stakeholder Engagement – When you love your stakeholders so much, you want to marry them.
10 – Stand-Up Meeting – Where you think everyone else in the meeting is a comedian.
11 – Timeboxing – When you’re fighting against the clock to meet a deadline.
12 – Zero-Based Budgeting – What you do the day after pay day.
More about Project Management as a Service from Stoneseed