Another Competence: Restating (the) Obvious (to) Normally Yawning Management (A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.)

No project, program, or initiative can be considered real until it’s chosen its acronym, or had one chosen for it. X-TRM effort gets expended creating every proposal, to mint what will seem the perfect coin; pocket change intended to buy everything the effort aspires to be (EEA2B), while avoiding anything inadvertently embarrassing (AAIE); a plugged nickel.

A newcomer to one program noticed that their Master Yearly Program Plan (which she humorously pronounced My Pee Pee) was, in fact, quite a bit larger than other programs’ annual master program plans. No old-timer on that team had noticed their joke until the new kid showed up.

The acronymization of project work is not a new phenomenon. It’s as old as project work itself. I suspect that even the ancient Egyptians, understandably eager to avoid chiseling into stone any more hieroglyphs than absolutely necessary, resorted to abbreviations whenever possible. But our age has taken the practice to new X-TRMZ creating wholly new dialects for every effort. Slip over here for more ...