In short: a good name for an internal project can set the right expectations and the right culture.

The problem

Project names often use what I call « black box » terms. Terms that everybody feels they now the definition of but everybody has another definition for them. These are terms like: strategy, vision, redesign, launch, research, etc.

When you use such terms you have two problems:

• You don’t know what are the expectation the term sets

• Other past projects might have used a similar name and their history might load negatively your own project

The solution

That’s why for big projects I like to make sure we spend some time at the start to choose a specific name for it.

There are two routes I took in past projects that worked well:

• Add an adjective: By adding another term before or after the black box term you can make it clearer. For example: « Minimal Strategy » or « One page strategy » set a totally different exceptation of the result than « Strategy ».

• Use storytelling: Use a term that has nothing to do with the typical business world, but that creates an image that forces people to ask « What’s that project about? ». For example « Project Iceberg » says something very different than « Vision », and you can explain why the iceberg is a good metaphor for the vision work you’ll do in this project.

The inspiration behind this article

The importance of a good name is something I learned the hard way when doing a big strategy project. And that importance was something that the IDEO U course « Leading Complex Projects » covers quite well.