Help me name my department

January 17, 2006 8:39 AM

I work for a medium sized software company with a significant professional services practice. This consists mainly of implementation consultants and project leads who do the hands on work of defining deliverables for clients and configuring the software to their specs. As part of a re-org last year we pulled a few people off of the line and set up what we called the Resource Team. This included a Knowledge Manager to organize all of our implementation articles and training, a project manager to build and rollout project management tools for the consultants, a design specialist to participate in the more complex projects, etc; about 8 people total that report to me. We recently did another re-org and I wanted to reconsider the name - looking for something a little more impactful. Any analogies out there or ideas for places to look? Thanks in advance!
posted by jbradley to Work & Money (19 answers total)

Yes, don't say impactful.
posted by fixedgear at 8:45 AM on January 17, 2006

jbradley posted "We recently did another re-org and I wanted to reconsider the name - looking for something a little more impactful."

Less jargon is more "impactful". Say what you really mean.
posted by orthogonality at 8:47 AM on January 17, 2006

impactful

It's just wrong.
posted by doctor_negative at 8:49 AM on January 17, 2006

How about Implementation and Client Management Services?
posted by spicynuts at 8:49 AM on January 17, 2006

How about "The Group Of Eight."
posted by johngoren at 8:50 AM on January 17, 2006

Are we going to provide answers or are we going to clog the question with bullshit about grammar?

Some other proposals:

Customer Management and Support Services

Roll-out and Support Services
posted by spicynuts at 8:53 AM on January 17, 2006

Several years ago, I worked for a large American corporation that had groups like this. They called each group a "Center of Excellence." Perhaps that has impact, although I thought the name was a bit too aspirational.
posted by blue mustard at 8:56 AM on January 17, 2006

The impactanators
posted by blue_beetle at 9:17 AM on January 17, 2006

My experience is that a team like this can become a process dictator, forcing one-size-fits-all solutions. The name should remind the team that the person closest to the customer should be in the driver's seat:

Navigators

Advice and Assistance Team

posted by mediaddict at 9:49 AM on January 17, 2006

Knoweldge Manager has a nice ring to it. What if your group was called "Knowledge Management" or "The Knowledge Team"?
posted by b_thinky at 10:20 AM on January 17, 2006

Strategic Resources
posted by safetyfork at 10:26 AM on January 17, 2006

A company I worked for a few years ago had a similar team. It was called "Field Technology". I think it's a good fit for you- it emphasizes that you do tech work, but neither core product development nor support.

And it's short. Departments over 3 words always get shortened to their TLA, which never helps.
posted by mkultra at 10:30 AM on January 17, 2006

How about Implementation and Client Management Services?

How about IMPlementation And ClienT FULfillment?
posted by EiderDuck at 10:32 AM on January 17, 2006

The Accelerators
posted by jouke at 10:42 AM on January 17, 2006

EiderDuck...very nice.
posted by spicynuts at 10:44 AM on January 17, 2006

Practice Development Group
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 11:32 AM on January 17, 2006

That depends, do you want people to have any idea what you do, or do you just want to sound cool?
posted by krisjohn at 2:27 PM on January 17, 2006

Response by poster: If Jane Seymour can say it, that's good enough for me.

Anyway, these are great suggestions. To the last post, in order of priority I would want the name to be
1. Descriptive of the services we provide
2. Cool enough to make the team proud of their membership.

Thanks folks.
posted by jbradley at 3:44 PM on January 17, 2006

I'd go for something with "expert" or "specialists" in it. It's a little clumsy, but "Expert Department" is probably accurate, though the implication is that other departments don't have experts.

(I assume that they do in fact form a coheasive department, and aren't just names from other departments partially responsible to you.)
posted by krisjohn at 4:27 PM on January 17, 2006