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Anyone Else Get Tripped up By Departmental Acronyms?

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Joshua Render Product Owner| Cognizant Harrisville, Ny, United States
I sometimes have to work with groups in a very detailed way to learn their processes. One thing I am always doing, when they use their departmental shorthand or acronyms, is asking them to explain it in more detail. I need to understand it a lot to do my job.

I worked with one group for several months, I swear I learned a hundred thousand new acronyms and definitions.

I now find myself working with a different but complementary group. I figured it would be easy because I already learned the lingo. I was wrong. The two groups have different acronyms and definitions for the exact same information. I thought it was just me at first, so I went back to the first group and verified.

I am starting to believe that this is part of the problem with their flow of information (An unrelated issue as to why I am working with the group right now).
Does anyone have any tips on how to maybe rectify this issue? Should I leave it alone? I have a few ideas, but I also expect a lot of resistance. These are entrenched names, each team actually having their own documents explaining them. I really think no one ever looked at this process from an end to end perspective before and I can only imagine what I would find if I worked with the other teams in this flow.
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Dinah Young Project Manager / Software Asset Manager| Prince William County Springfield, Va, United States
Many years ago, my first job was on a Navy contract. I had to create an acronym dictionary just to get through a document.
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1 reply by Joshua Render
May 31, 2018 4:07 PM
Joshua Render
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Oh, they have these, I feel bad for whoever wrote them.
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Joshua Render Product Owner| Cognizant Harrisville, Ny, United States
May 31, 2018 3:39 PM
Replying to Dinah Young
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Many years ago, my first job was on a Navy contract. I had to create an acronym dictionary just to get through a document.
Oh, they have these, I feel bad for whoever wrote them.
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Kiron Bondale Retired | Mentor| Retired Welland, Ontario, Canada
Joshua -

This is a natural outcome of "tribe" behavior at a team, department or organization level. It is not done with the explicit goal of confusing outsiders, but that is one of its side benefits! I've encountered it in small and huge private and public sector organizations so it's not a function of industry, size or location...

Short of introducing a "NO acronyms" policy, this behavior will persist...

Kiron
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Kevin Coleman Subject Matter Expert, Author, Speaker and Strategic Advisor| - Insights Pa, United States
I just told an individual that was on a proposal project they MUST create a glossary for Acronyms!
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Joshua Render Product Owner| Cognizant Harrisville, Ny, United States
Fun stuff. I've made acronyms for projects. When possible I try to use existing language for the area I am working in.

Here it's the 2+ departments referencing the same material and using different words for it. and as a result different acronyms.
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Eric Simms Senior Program Manager Baltimore, Maryland, United States
I suggest having the teams create a glossary for all these terms. I have the same issue of terms and acronyms have different meaning within different groups, and an online glossary goes a long way toward helping avoid confusion.

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