The IT Skeptic - terminology

Terminological debasement

skeptic — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 22:55:16 +0000

I track terminological debasement on this site. Here are some examples. Got any more?

Governors govern

skeptic — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 22:40:02 +0000

I've said it before on this blog a number of times but it bears repeating: governors govern.

CMDB: what does it really mean

skeptic — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 22:34:36 +0000

"CMDB" means many things to many people. When the IT Skeptic debates against "CMDB" or "CMS" what I really mean is "that huge IT Monument to unnecessary technology which is known to the vendors and their sucker buyers as CMDB". Unfortunately the more precise label is a bit ponderous :) The term CMDB which was originally a label for a Generic Thing has become hijacked to be the label for a Great Big Technology.

Good practice and best practice

skeptic — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 23:50:57 +0000

ITIL V3 did a little word dance around what "good practice" and "best practice" mean which had more to do with political semantics and digging themselves out of a hole than it did about what the terms really mean. It ought to be straightforward:

Job title inflation is out of control

skeptic — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:22:14 +0000

Job title inflation is out of control. Mr X's job is to give "high-level strategy, corporate vision" to the suits at Fortune 500 clients of a US software vendor, and to do "orchestration of solution sales cycles". In other words he's a high-powered presales guy. His job title? Vice President. There was a time when a Vice President was the sidekick to the President. Now he's the sidekick to the salesman. I bet this is a salary-banding thing. Either that or corporate America has gone mad. Or both.

Terminological debasement of governance

skeptic — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 01:27:59 +0000

Two excellent publications recently commented on what I call terminological debasement of the term "governance".

What should IT call the Rest Of The Business?

skeptic — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:44:30 +0000

IT serves the Business. But we are all generally agreed that we must stop talking about "IT and the Business". IT is part of the business. The users of IT include IT itself. Talk of IT as a distinct entity ("align IT and the busienss") is a Bad Thing. So what should we call it?

The word all consultants and writers should avoid: "must"

skeptic — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:35:21 +0000

I am trying to drive a word out of my vocabulary: "must".

Terminological debasement: a committee becomes a board

skeptic — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 08:16:53 +0000

In a recent announcement from APMG, the IT Skeptic identifies a troubling new terminological debasement trend. Apparently a committee is now a board. We had the Combined Strategy Board, the ITIL Qualifications Board. Now we have the Foundation Review Project Board. Come to think of it, ITIL has been doing this for a while: since when was a CAB anything but a committee?

ITIL product compliance

skeptic — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:08:22 +0000

[updated: it seems salient to revisit this post. To the vendor who proudly declared on this blog that your product is "ITIL aligned" you might like to measure that "alignment" against this list. ("Aligned" is the new slippery-speak now that "compliant" is on the nose)]

The IT Skeptic’s ITIL Compliance Alignment Criteria

ISO38500 may be too late; the word "governance" is rapidly equalling "management"

skeptic — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 01:03:54 +0000

The word "governance" is in danger of total debasement. ISO38500 may be only half-cooked but that is because it arrived just in time... or perhaps too late.

What Governance Isn't

skeptic — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 07:57:03 +0000

Governance is hot. "Governance" is the "in" word right now in IT. It is also a word that is suffering badly from terminological debasement, something the IT Skeptic has railed against on this blog before. Look for more on this in the near future.

collecting examples of terminological debasement

skeptic — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 21:11:13 +0000

Maybe I'll start collecting examples of terminological debasement, such as

Debasement of IT terms

skeptic — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:52:24 +0000

9:07 minutes (8 MB)

This is a podcast of the original article from the IT Skeptic: "Debasement of concepts by IT vendors and analysts" by the IT Skeptic.

The persistent erosion of meaning in IT terminology is a damaging practice endemic across vendors and analysts. When a concept gains some currency and everyone wants it, suddenly all the vendors have got it - often by re-labelling a feature of their existing product. And the analysts keep confusing the definition so no-one can call the vendors out for this obfuscation.

Debasement of concepts by IT vendors and analysts

skeptic — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 00:27:27 +0000

This article has been podcast

ITIL's CMDB can't be done, no-how

skeptic — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 22:02:14 +0000

This discussion of CMDB and its total impracticality has got legs. Let me reinforce two points please: (1) CMDB can't be done because of the data and regardless of the implementation and (2) I'm talking about CMDB as specified by the ITIL books, not any old database. It can't be done.