A while back, I noticed that quite a lot of people are following that trend to unify a bunch of talking points to a more or less memorizable acronym. Sometimes, this is a great mnemonic device to make the essence of a thing clear in seconds – but for some reason, there are few stories acknowledged in which such attempts actually fail.
However, one of the most prominent acronyms in project management is the idea of S.M.A.R.T. goals. That easily dissolves into S for Specific, M for Measureable, and… hm… T is… something about Time, and then there are A and R, and they very clearly… well well. let’s consult wikipedia… span up a multidimensional vector space out of {Achievable, Attainable, Assignable, Agreed, Action-oriented, Ambitious, Aligned with corporate goals, Realistic, Resourced, Reasonable, Results-based}.
Now this is the point where it’s hard to follow. These are somehow too much possibilities, with no clear assignment. There are probably lots of people out there with their very specific memorization and their very specific interpretation of these letters; and it might very well be true that this forced acronym holds some value. In their specific case.
But why shouldn’t we be honest about it? If you have such a situation, you are not communicating clearly anymore. You have gone beyond that point. There is not a clear, concise meaning anymore.
These are the points where you would be honest to leave your brilliant acronym behind. If you ever sit in a seminar where someone wants to teach you some “easily memorizable acronym” with lots of degrees of freedom, open to interpretation and obviously changing over time, just – complain. Of course, everyone is entitled to using their own memory hook (“Eselsbrücke”) in order to remember whatever his or her goal is. That is not my point.
My Issue is with “official” acronyms that are not clear and constant. We as software developers have a responsibility to treat such inconsistencies as very dangerous and more harmful than helpful. With this post, I want to bring the idea out there that one should rather more often complain about a bad acronym than just think “weeeeell, but I really like how it sounds and I don’t care that it’s somewhat tainted.”
Or am I completely bullheaded in that regard? What is your opinion?
PS: If you are German and remember the beginning of 2021, a similar laziness happened there when our government tried to make their Covid rules clear and well-known. Note that this remark does have nothing to do with politics. Anyway: they invented this acronym of “AHA” (which, in German, is also that sound of having a light bulb appear over your head.) Not that bad of an idea. However, one of that “A”s originally meant “you just need a non-medical mask (Alltagsmaske) everywhere” – until some day, it was changed to “you need a medical face mask in everyday life (im Alltag)”. They just thought it clever to keep the acronym, but change one letter to mean its near opposite.
This is dangerous. Grossly negilent. Just for the sake of liking your old acronym too much, you needlessly fails to communicate clearly. Which is, for a government as much as for a software developer, usually your job.
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