Failure to Communicate

Computerworld - Years ago, a CIO was presenting his case for a significant mainframe upgrade to the board of his large corporation. He covered all the geek buzzwords: CPU utilization, current and planned MIPS, DASD requirement, channel configurations. He finally noticed that all around the table, people were nodding off. Sensing that he was in trouble, he leaned forward and fixed his eyes on the CEO, determined to connect. "Let me make it simple for you," he said. "I'm talking thermal conduction modules: TCMs."

The terms may have changed, but the problem remains. Many IT people still talk technical, and until they abandon geekspeak, business will never understand the value of IT.

The space between business and IT is a "cataclysmic gulf," says Deryck G. Jones. As a former chief technology officer who is now president of OnDemand Global Solutions LLC, a consulting firm in Bethesda, Md., he's been on both sides. "Within this continental divide, budget overruns are born, serious errors in judgment are made, [and] organizations pay millions of dollars only to experience catastrophic failure," he says.

Credit: David Plunkert

Many technology terms are meaningless outside IT. Take regression test. Say it and business people will have no idea what you're talking about, Stanley says. "It sounds like you're putting your software on the couch to talk about its early life," he says.

It's All Relative

Some terms have different meanings in different contexts. To an IT person, IP means Internet Protocol, but to his company's attorney it means intellectual property.

Still other terms can cause misunderstandings. For example, when a database senses that it may become corrupted, it shuts down, and that's called a "panic." It's a good safety measure, but you probably don't want to share the term with your business partners.

Some geek terms are almost comical for their opacity. Ever hear of a MUP? That's a double acronym that stands for Multiple UNC (Universal Naming Convention) Provider, a Microsoft proprietary code that facilitates communications between clients and servers in a network.

To some extent, a group may use jargon to impress those not in "the club." But for IT, this typically backfires. "I tell [IT people] that they do not have to impress the users with techno talk; they have to impress them by explaining, in plain English, the benefits the users will receive from the technology we are providing," says Tony Romero, CIO at Mitsubishi Motor Sales of America Inc. in Cypress, Calif.