Acronyms Are Everywhere

Even experienced employees may have trouble keeping up. Acronyms are used constantly as they give the team the ability to speed up conversations. This article shows how project teams can quickly educate new members and reduce confusion for everyone.

The use of acronyms can really speed business conversations, but only for those who understand them. Over the course of project planning and implementation processes, the number of acronyms increases rapidly. This seems especially true for military and government agencies, but is common in many business areas. Even our hardware and software come with pre-define acronyms. Windows NT,( "New Technology"), IBM PC, ("International Business Machines Personal Computer"), IP, ("Internet Protocol"), are all acronyms that have been introduced with new technologies and have become widely understood. Still others such as TCP/IP are in near constant use by people who generally do not know the particular details. Some acronyms have evolved into nearly a dialect of their own, understood only by their regular users. For example, text messaging has brought "OMG", "BRB", "CU", and many others, into the popular English language but only for those people who use computer chat applications or mobile phones regularly.

A study of acronyms reveals that they are a fairly new feature of language. Frequent use seems to have started in the 1950's when science and technology started to deliver large numbers of new products and concepts. In fact, earlier references to acronyms are rare, with the notable exceptions of "OK", "AM", "PM", "AD", "BC" and a very few others.

As the reader will confirm, acronyms are very common in today's culture. This is especially true for the English language, and to a lesser degree, other languages. As acronyms proliferate, compound acronyms and other complexities have developed.

This can be very confusing for new members of a project team. Existing staff tend to use many of the established acronyms with little regard for the new staff. Taken to the extreme, new staff will feel totally lost and ineffective in their project environment. Obviously the project manager should take necessary steps to get new staff trained and engaged as quickly as possible.

Project managers should encourage new staff to write down all acronyms that they find in conversation. The person should then either question the source for the acronym meaning, or later perform further research. Often acronyms used in conversation will be defined shortly afterwards or their meaning can be found in the context of their use. The usual practice for business documentation is to define an acronym when it is used first, as a service to the reader. This practice is not always followed so the new staff member should identify omissions when found.

The provincial government of British Columbia has established a central repository of acronyms. Using a "Wiki" tool, they have built an extensive list of acronyms with definitions and examples. This tool is freely available to government employees, and allows anyone who creates or finds an acronym to easily record the definition. Since this tool is available to all employees, it allows new staff to quickly check terms they don't recognize. If the term is missing, the employee is encouraged to provide a new entry, even without a definition. The tool broadcasts all new entries to a bulletin area for all to see. The Wiki also offers staff the ability to keep a historical record of acronyms. In government, various programs and agencies change names over time. Documentation is generally updated to show the new terms; however, often only the most recently superseded term will be defined. Older acronym definitions are easily hidden from new staff. The Wiki keeps these older terms and helps people understand older documentation.

As knowledge continues to be valuable to organizations, firms should recognize the value of their acronyms, or at least the hidden costs that may result from their use. Educating new staff to watch for such terms, encouraging existing staff to be careful with acronyms, and establishing a central acronym repository are simple steps that can benefit an entire organization.