Speaking the Lingua Twitta

The pace at which language evolves today is a bit dizzying. New words are created every day, and are disseminated rapidly via the media, e-mail, regular conversation (oh my!), and social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook. Whether esteemed linguists find them worthy of a dictionary is irrelevant. When the Twitter-obsessed, tech-crazy masses get their mitts on them, they’re only a hashtag away from officially entering the Lingua Twitta.

Here are a handful of recent IT industry buzzwords, which can be filed alongside other, more established terms like “cloud computing,” “virtualization,” even “SaaS.” This lot seems to have been inspired by a hodgepodge of influences, from early American history to the speed-dating fad of the late 1990s. Be sure to right-click and add them to your dictionary:

OVERSOFTWARING: CIO.com never fails to furnish interesting new terms, and this week’s is a fricative delight. The word, which figures prominently in this post by blogger Thomas Wailgum, describes the action of a company that installs up-to-the-minute software on its workers’ computers but doesn’t provide them training so they can use the new features. (Wailgum also calls it TMS, or “too much software.”)

With budgets as tight as they are today, there is no excuse for such blatant disregard for ROI.

Example in context: Howard in IT oversoftwared Bob in accounting when he installed Adobe Professional on his computer. After all, Bob doesn’t need to modify forms or edit PDFs; he just needs to create and view a PDF once every quarter.

Oversoftwaring is a troubling trend, especially when you look at the stats. Wailgum cites a recent Accenture survey in which researchers found that organizations use only 64 percent of their enterprise systems’ basic functions. In the same study, about a fifth of respondents said they didn’t use certain features because they didn’t have the time to learn how.*

What’s more, some companies automatically refresh their software when new versions are released, regardless of necessity. Employees are lost without training, and productivity dwindles. With budgets as tight as they are today, there is no excuse for such blatant disregard for ROI (for more on proving ROI, see “How Not to Sabotage Your Whopping Software Investment“).

*Accenture studied 300 senior IT professionals at the largest 2,000 companies in North America and the UK.

SPEED SOURCING: Like its linguistic cousin “speed dating,” speed sourcing (thanks again CIO!) “simplifies” the usually arduous process of selecting an outsourcing partner. Supporters of speed dating contend that because people quickly decide if they are romantically compatible, and that first impressions are often permanent, decisions can be made in a snap. Apply that logic to outsourcing contracts and you have speed sourcing: Pick from a shortlist of suitors, find out the basics of what they have to offer, take a trial run, and iron out the trifling details, like service level agreements and other contractual matters, later. You can cut out early if it’s not working. (Read CIO.com’s article on speed sourcing here.)

IT POPULISM: Here’s what the landscape will look like if IT Populism takes hold in IT departments: CIOs and other decision makers, who once enjoyed unquestioned power over which platforms to support and what devices to allow, will be silenced by chatter about clouds, desktop virtualization, multiple platforms and mobility.

Younger, tech-smart workers, who will take the place of retiring baby boomers, will demand a less rigid set of rules and insist on a more flexible, mobile-friendly work environment. Like dictators with a stale message, IT leaders can either go into exile or adapt. It sounds like a modern B-movie, but eWeek.com says it’s quickly becoming reality. (Read eWeek’s piece here.)

Have you come across any noteworthy additions to the business lexicon? Send them my way. (Jen Darr)

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