Jargon Means Shields Up for Consultants
February 21, 2010
I just read “Computer Jargon Baffles Users, Hinders Security.” This is a Thomson Reuters’ news story, and I don’t know if the wild and crazy url will work when you read this. Not my fault. Email Thomson Reuters, whose customer support crew is ready to help you.
The news story is one that runs every few months. The idea is that jargon is pretty much impossible for the average person to figure out. The argument in the Thomson Reuters’ story pivots on security, but the journalist could have picked on search, business intelligence, or any other common enterprise application. Jargon is a defense mechanism. Magic.
For me, the key passage in the Thomson Reuters’ story was:
“The malicious and criminal use of cyberspace today is stunning in its scope and innovation,” said Dell Services President Peter Altabef. One problem is that computer “geeks” use jargon to cloak their work in scholarly mystique, resulting in a lack of clarity in everything from instruction manuals and systems design to professional training, the experts said. “If you don’t demystify security, people become anxious about it and don’t want to do it,” former U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told Reuters on the sidelines of the EastWest Institute security meeting in Brussels.
I had a conversation with a big wheel from a blue chip consulting firm. I really want to reveal which firm, but my legal eagle squawks when I provide certain information in this Web log. The guts of the conversation are easy to summarize.
The blue-chip outfit needed my input regarding a certain high profile search vendor. I made my point about the firm. My recollection is that I said:
System does not work as advertised. The firm has generated revenues by buying other companies. The revenue looks great but there has not been enough will power nor money to integrate the different acquisitions’ technology. In short, lots of difficulty configuring, tuning, customizing, and scaling this system.
The blue-chip woman told me that she had never heard this in her previous interviews. She called some self-appointed experts, a couple of azure chip outfits, and read Web logs. That’s how she located me, she added.
I pointed out the following things I had learned in the last three or four decades:
First, it is easy to be positive when you have no hands on experience with search, content processing, indexing, and repurposing content. Everyone knows how to run a query on Google. Few know or care how Google generates the results or how a Google results list presents only one company’s index of content. Other sources have to be consulted because contrary to the average Web searchers’ perception Google does not have “everything”. Maybe someday. Just not now.
Second, vendors could use the Excalibur Technologies / Convera marketing collateral from 1981, and most experts and procurement teams would not be able to explain whether the system described worked or not. Even when given a demo, the majority of the tire kickers have little experience determining how long it takes to update an index, why users cannot locate information in the system, or how to convince the boss to provide the money to scale the system so users don’t wait several minutes for results. In short, a lack of knowledge contributes to the search problems many organizations face. Licensees don’t know what they are licensing. Some search vendor marketers don’t explain the buzz words. Result: errors, confusion, and cost overruns.
Third, users cannot explain what they want in terms that can be mapped to the actual functions of most search systems. In the last big search procurement the goslings handled for a non US company’s government wide system, the most common interview responses were “make it like Google” or “I need a report, not a laundry list.” When users veer between Google’s paternalistic and arrogant approach and stuff in science fiction movies, a knowledge gap is evident.
Again I don’t want to focus on specific consultants or experts, but I can characterize why the information about search and content processing often is misleading to enterprise procurement teams. You may find my comments at odds with the “feel good” cheerleading that passes as objective analysis of search and content processing vendors. That’s okay. I hear this and then when the system goes off the rails, I get an opportunity to work with wiser people. A massive foul up often has a focusing effect, not always, of course.
- The people writing about search, content processing, information management, or a related field may not have “deep craft”, a phrase originating with W. Brian Arthur. In short, there is some knowledge, just not enough. The analogy is to a person who can use an ATM machine without knowing how the bank authenticates the person’s debit card. Search or any information-related system requires “deep craft”.
- The so called experts may be journalists who have found a new career, failed programmers who can talk better than they can code, or an art history major who landed a writing job and finds herself an expert by virtue of reading articles about information. Yep, that works really well until the “expert” has to make something work. One CMS expert installed Vignette to manage a bunch of links. That worked really well after a few million bucks were dumped on the problem.
- The expert may know something—for example, which company in Seattle fired a specific vendor and then sent out an email to other vendors for a price quote only if the vendors’ system worked—but cannot reveal details for fear of litigation. The result is baloney like the information in this blog. I know stuff, but my legal eagle suggests I maintain radio silence. When a news item appears, like the one about the Middle Eastern company’s unhappiness with a certain vendor’s search system, then I comment. So, the “law” masks some potentially useful information by accident.
- The vendors recycle lingo without thinking about its jargon quotient. I wrote about the drifting away of Convera. Take a moment and read what’ Convera says about its search system. A marketing person at another company could recycle that lingo and it would work just fine. The words mean zero to most readers. I think that repeating jargon works like a mother’s heart beat. The baby is hard wired to a pattern. Run the pattern on a tape and the baby is a happy camper. Same with procurement teams in my opinion.
On Thursday I had a long conference call about a certain vendor’s method of categorizing vendors as stars, contenders, dogs, and feral pigs. I pointed out that without some metrics or a repeatable method, the categorization was pretty much meaningless. One of the people on the call wanted to know if the consulting firm sold slots in its graphic. I have no idea, but I know that when the backlog goes to zero and the red ink flows, individuals make some darned interesting decisions. Remember Bernie Madoff?
Can you expect the “real story” from any azure chip consultant, poobah, self appointed expert, art history major turned information expert, or journalist going for the big payday as a poobah? Nope.
Direct talk, deep craft, and Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours are less plentiful than marketing baloney. It is much easier to use jargon, make the sale, and move on. Life in the 21st century is indeed amusing.
Just my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, February 21, 2010
No one paid me to write this. Because I mention procurement, I will report my miserable condition that comes from writing for new money to the GSA. The GSA just spent $70 million to improve its information technology systems. Great project.
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
