Intraversed myth busting:
Only data management professionals need a glossary, and glossaries are only for data management

ESTIMATED READING TIME: 2 MINUTES

The Myth

Only data management people need a glossary, and glossaries are only for data management.

Why people believe the myth

For data management professionals (and other IT professionals) a business term glossary is incredibly useful. After all, when such a glossary is effectively written and managed, project failures a far less likely. So IT projects, or large data management overhauls, are usually the catalysts for talk of a glossary. It’s understandable that people would connect glossaries with data management and nothing more.

The Problem with the Myth

Few people make the connection between business-side activity and the benefits of a glossary.

It’s business-side staff who are developing, actioning and improving business processes. And all that business-side activity creates and uses business language.

As business processes evolve and expand, as staff change, and as the tools being used change, language also moves and evolves – but not always consistently across the whole organisation. Functional area-specific language develops. Term meanings morph over time in area-specific ways. Legacy language becomes hard to keep track of, while still used in the data management that’s going on behind the scenes. As a consequence, language easily gets mis-used and mis-understood. The likelihood of confusion increases, particularly when communicating outside your functional area, and to IT specifically.

What We Suggest Instead of This Myth

A well written and actively business-managed glossary can deliver even small teams an assurance that language-based misunderstandings and ambiguity is unlikely to arise. If it does, it’ll be much more easily identified and rectified. When an organisation or business area has a quality glossary, which can be references in any communication including policies and procedures, it will decrease ambiguity in IT request documents and reduce project failure rates, as well as assist with the reduction of project timelines. But it will also enable improved organisational IP management, prevent knowledge-loss with staff attrition over time, and streamline new employee onboarding.

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Our Intralign Encyclopaedia is built on our industry-leading glossary, designed for business staff, to support business activity. Our new Team Starter monthly subscription option puts this comprehensive glossary platform within reach of single business teams. Find out more here.

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