How IT can communicate more effectively with the business
Read these next two sentences:
"Kevin Pietersen fell short of the highest-ever score for Surrey when he was left on 355 not out against Leicestershire at The Oval.
They were all out for 557 when last man Matt Dunn was caught behind, denying Pietersen the chance to beat Bobby Abel's unbeaten 357 in 1899."
(For anyone who understands cricket, then try understanding the infield fly rule instead.)
Every word in those two sentences is in English, and yet most native English speakers in the United States can make no sense of them.
Try this one, that you could hear in a project status meeting from your head of development: "We are going to re-factor that part of the code." All English words, but not meaningful outside of IT, so you ask the head of development to try again. You get this: "We are going to improve the internal structure of the module's source code, while preserving its external behavior." (Paraphrased from agilealliance.org.)
Again, all English words, but not helpful for the non-native IT speaker. The third time is the charm: "We are going to spend the next two weeks simplifying a part of our code so it can be updated more efficiently as your needs change, but we are not going to delay the go-live date." That wasn't so hard now, was it
Here are some good rules for communicating with your non-IT brethren:
The meaning of the sentences on cricket As nearly as I can tell, Bobby Abel has been the man to beat for 116 years and counting!