New Terminology in the project management profession

Word map showing business terminology words

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?



By David

Retired Capital Projects Manager

2 comments

  1. 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

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