On Terminology, and the Resolution of Related Issues : A practical method for establishing and maintaining terminology that is unambiguous and relevant for a given scope or purpose, and resolving related issues.

Many people have experienced situations where a discussion suddenly seemed to be hindered as people raised an issue about a term. One of my personal experiences is a standardization meeting of an ISO expert working group, where a debate was started around the term ‘organization’, the relevance of which is that standards such as ISO 9001 (quality), 14001 (environment) or 27001 (information security), state that the associated management process is run by an organization, so you need the ability to determine what is (not) an organization. Some participants said that only enterprises should be considered as an organization, and its departments should not, arguing that a standard should cover entire companies, not just parts of it. Others argued that departments should also be considered an organization, referring to the definition given by the (online1) Oxford English Dictionary (OED), that says: “An organized group of people with a particular purpose, such as a business or government department”.
Discussions such as these are difficult to manage, and more often than not lead to what I call ‘the Terminology Confusion issue’. The Terminology Confusion issue arises whenever people use a term and experience communications difficulties, such as misunderstandings, even if (and perhaps: in particular when) the term is properly defined.
Terminology confusion is very common, even if definitions are available and (generally) considered to be good. While in simple situations it is often not a big deal, it cause many problems when we try to cooperate with various parties to pursue complex goals. Having a good dictionary, glossary, or other terminology document (as in the example) does not always prevent or remedy such issues.
This document proposes an approach for preventing and/or remedying terminology confusion issues. It does so by focusing on the effects that we want definitions to have rather than on its mere existence. We show that this focus leads us to a new way to define terms, and that we can actually test such definitions for their quality – i.e.: the measure in which they produce the desired effects. We conclude by providing guidance for dealing with situations where terminology confusion pops up. This guidance enables discussions to be quickly concluded and definitions to be improved as needed, and is a valuable resource in any terminology governance processes.