Back To The Basics

During my time at Bull I had the opportunity to setup a Lunch&Learn program. For those who don’t know what it is, briefly it is a training event during lunch time. Usually the employer offers a free complimentary lunch.

The program had a huge positive impact and highly appreciated by the employees at Bull, with packed room for most of the topics … maybe because of the free lunch 🙂 OK guys, just kidding here.

The format of a Lunch&Learn program do not allow you to deep dive a topic but really to set the basics, get a good grasp on the concepts and the terminology.

And that’s the trigger of this post.

You would be surprised how much, Cloud Computing for instance, is misunderstood by the people. Adding to that the misuse of the term in many marketing materials, white papers articles, blog posts, etc.

The big issue with this kind of situation is when we need to sit down and discuss a project, well each one has his own definition, terminology and conceptual view of the matter. Every one has his own opinion, more or less pertinent, but there is no consensus to move forward. How many of you had endless meetings just to agree about what is or is not a specific topic such Cloud Computing.

That’s why it is important to get back to the basics and eventually start any project by (re-)defining the baseline, the basics, so we speak all the same language and share the same concepts and terminology. No mis-interpretation, mis-understanding, no mis-communication, no mis-perception, no mis-xxx for the good of the project…

I would like to hear from you. Do you do such thing as set the basics prior starting a project? How do you deal with the mis-xxx? Do you define concepts and terminology within your architecture documentation for instance?