Most of us have seen this notification in our Outlook Calendar on the day of our Standards meeting.
Management wants you to perform the best. You want to perform your best. But yet, nothing is getting done, theres alot of road-blocks in your way, and the ultimate is that everyone is still developing in a silo. No one knows really a pathway to follow, we're just all wing'n it.
That's just marvelous.
We'll keep churning out code, doesn't matter if anyone knows whats going on, but least the managers know that we are spending that extra 1 hr per week doing something other than in a meeting. ROI! Woo!
Acronym Hell
In meetings with non-development types, why use technical acronyms that you think you may know, but you don't really know? Or even worse, someone else using the acronym that doesn't know what it means and you do.
Next time your in a meeting try saying the actual phrase instead of acronym and see how many dumb looks you get. Maybe this should be added into one of the many development processes under the "meetings" section like so:
During requirements gathering and feedback meetings do not use any acronyms. Say the entire phrase that would have had an acronym used.
This would definitely clear up the acronym-hell that has been created as a result of the dot-com era.
I should stop the post right here, but i'm going to give an example anyway of a meeting that I had recently and show the differences in meanings (VERY simple example, this conversation I should hope never happens):
Acronym-used
PM: We need to be able to send our customers an XML file with all their data in it.
ME: Ok what information needs to be in this file? What elements need to be in it?
Acronym-not used
PM: We need to be able to send our customers and XML file with all their data in it.
ME: What needs to be in the xtensible-mark-up-language file?
PM: What's that?
ME: A file that shows the raw-data in a specific structure
PM: Oh, it's not a document that can be printed and shown to CEO's?
ME: No.
Next time your in a meeting try saying the actual phrase instead of acronym and see how many dumb looks you get. Maybe this should be added into one of the many development processes under the "meetings" section like so:
During requirements gathering and feedback meetings do not use any acronyms. Say the entire phrase that would have had an acronym used.
This would definitely clear up the acronym-hell that has been created as a result of the dot-com era.
I should stop the post right here, but i'm going to give an example anyway of a meeting that I had recently and show the differences in meanings (VERY simple example, this conversation I should hope never happens):
Acronym-used
PM: We need to be able to send our customers an XML file with all their data in it.
ME: Ok what information needs to be in this file? What elements need to be in it?
Acronym-not used
PM: We need to be able to send our customers and XML file with all their data in it.
ME: What needs to be in the xtensible-mark-up-language file?
PM: What's that?
ME: A file that shows the raw-data in a specific structure
PM: Oh, it's not a document that can be printed and shown to CEO's?
ME: No.
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