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The Naked CIO: Cut the bull
Time to tear down the jargon barrier...

By Naked CIO

Published: Monday 17 March 2008

Many IT managers constantly complain about not being understood by non-technical colleagues. But what do they expect when no one can make out what they're saying, argues the Naked CIO.

For years we in IT have revelled in our pig Latin version of language and phraseology that made us uber-cool - or uber-geek, depending on which side of the fence you sat.

It was a source of pride that we spoke using letters or words that meant nothing outside the IT community. Somehow it made us more credible and intelligent.

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Unfortunately, this language now alienates us from other business colleagues. It makes us look different at a time when we are begging to be included in decisions and trying to be part of business culture.

Technical speak is now so ingrained that most of us only realise we have reverted to LAN, WAN, SAN argot when the faces of non-technical people sitting around the table become blank with incomprehension.

It is very difficult for us to put a sentence together that describes the computing environment without using some combination of letters to describe something very simple in a very complex way.

This perceived communication problem is one of the single biggest issues that still creates a barrier to IT's inclusion in the business world. We refer to layman's terms when really we should be talking about non-IT terms.

I pride myself on my ability to communicate at all levels of the organisation, yet I'm still sometimes hampered by acronyms for which I have no English definition.

We have even started confusing ourselves because we now duplicate acronyms such as CMS - call management system, content management system, or customer management system?

With every piece of new technology that comes out we adopt a similar cryptic reference that is non-transferable to everyday language.

If our world of bits and bytes were not already stretching the comprehension of our business colleagues this abbreviation mentality certainly is.

We then cling to phrases we believe the business understands such as business alignment, which in reality are so ambiguous and without common context that they are just as baffling.

We must find some common business data dictionary that can break down the barriers of isolationism and try to have more dynamic meaning communication with all aspects of our respective businesses.

We need to become preachers of technology and speak in ways colleagues can understand. I used to tease an old boss of mine for his idiosyncratic catch-phrases, such as: "I am only cooking the dinner if I buy the groceries", which meant IT can't be brought in at the later stages of the project. Or, "Always plan for the divorce before you get married" for contract preparations.

But in fact using accessible analogies to communicate IT challenges does work. So I discourage tech speak even on the shopfloor and try to explain technical issues using familiar parallels. Stay away from clichés that are too generic.