The importance of a taxonomy

Today I attended a meeting at which IBM described their Infosphere product suite for information management. During the presentation we discussed their Business Glossary tool which led to an interesting discussion around the importance of having an agreed business glossary (taxonomy). The discussion centered around the fact that business and IT people don't speak the same language and in many cases even business people don't share the same language. A couple of examples were used to illustrate the problem. One example involved six directors in a telecommunications company who thought they understood what an active subscriber was but when they got together to agree the definition ended up having a big row. The other example involved a Bancassurer where the meaning of an active customer in the banking part of the business meant that they were alive whereas in the life assurance business it meant that they had died.

I think these are fantastic examples of why we should all be careful in any discussions we have regarding any topic in assuming we are using the same language - I know this has gotten me into trouble to me a few times at home as well! :)