We have all felt the frustration of not being able to fully participate in a conversation because of the large number of ACRONYMS (Alphabetic Characters Representing Obscure Names You Must Shorten) in use by GURUS (Groups Uttering Regrettably Unclear Slang) and long-term company VETERANS (Very Experienced Technical Experts Repeating ACRONYMS Nobody Speaks). Until you develop the EAR (Experience, Appreciation, and Respect) for a team's specific ARGOT (Abbreviated References to Generally Obvious Things), it's unfortunately easy to be left feeling like an IGNORAMUS (Individual Given No Opportunity to Respond to A Million Unintelligible Sayings).
This project aims to make Pivotal a more inclusive environment by explicitly defining the terms, acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, and jargon used throughout our company.
The site is generated from yaml files located in the /entries directory. An
entry will look something like this:
---
headword: PWS
expansion: Pivotal Web Services
definition: >
Pivotal's CF-as-a-service offering. This is an instance of
cf-deployment maintained by the CloudOps team. This environment
is useful for getting feedback on the experience of operating
Cloud Foundry at scale.
links:
- https://run.pivotal.io
see_also:
- CF-D
- PaaS
Other than headword, all fields are considered optional.
These files can be created and edited manually. Or, to get started on a new
entry, you can create an empty template by running rake add_word["Pair Programming"].
To preview how the site will look with new entries, build it with rake && open build/index.html
The need for this list became clear when two members of my team, both new Pivots, let me know how overwhelmed they felt by all the acronyms flying at them all the time. I don't think we would have had that conversation if not for the Inclusion workshop organized for us by Gareth Smith.
My humorous acronyming has been inspired by this delightful piece by Dan Caprera in McSweeny's Internet Tendency. Check it out.