Project Management is a fast-developing profession. I see many new words and phrases which I did not come across during my career
For example over recent months, I have seen used the following terminology:
- Transformation project
- Project data analytics
- Learning legacy
- Net-zero
- Built environment
- Third sector projects
- Reflexive learning
- Engaged scholarship
- Reference class forecasting
- VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous)
- Psychological Safety
The following questions spring to mind:
- Why has the new terminology sprung up? Has the profession genuinely become more complex or is it just people making stuff up?
- This has always been the case during my career as new ways of thinking are explored. Is it accelerating?
- Are these words genuinely new concepts, or just rebadging the old?
- Is there benefits to injecting new language into the profession? Does it keep things fresh/bring extra impetus?
- Are we making it too complicated for project managers at the coal face?
Google trends is a fascinating website which displays the number of times that terms have been searched to give a rough indication of how popular they are at any moment in time.
Quite a few of the examples you give have been quite steady since 2004 and don’t show much increase or decrease, for example:
– Transformation Project – https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=GB&q=transformation%20project
– Third Sector – https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=GB&q=Third%20sector
A number of your terms don’t show up on Google at all – suggesting they’re either not used very much, or extremely recent additions to the vernacular.
There are two obvious exceptions which have risen greatly in popularity – but this is not surprising given they’re modern capabilities which have increased relevance to the current environment:
– Data Analytics – https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=GB&q=data%20analytics
– Net Zero – https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=GB&q=Net-zero
An interesting comment from StrategyMan