Waffles and Taxonomies

I live in South Carolina and one of my family’s favorite breakfast places is Waffle House. Christine the Waitress will greet you when you walk into my local Waffle House as if you are a long-lost friend. If you order scrambled eggs, hash browns, wheat toast, and well done bacon; Christine will call out “drop a bacon burned, scrambled plate, wheat.” Even with dozens of other orders being called, your order comes out just right. This is excellent taxonomy at work.

Taxonomy is rapidly becoming a highly specialized field. Successful industries know that a professional, even artful in the case of Waffle House, application of basic taxonomy rules will pay off. For those of us in medium- and small-sized companies that means that we are going to have to become the taxonomy experts, don’t expect to see a “Taxonomist” on staff soon.

Why is this important? You need to know a few things about taxonomy so when the next high priced consultant/salesman drops in and dazzles your boss with a bunch of techno-speak about taxonomy, you won’t be clueless. Hey, you might actually impress your boss. Regardless, after reading this article you will feel better about revising your job description to include “provides taxonomy assistance.”

Taxonomy means the practice or science of classification. Not too long ago in our business we called it “indexing.” However, that isn’t descriptive enough and taxonomy is a more accurate description for what we want to get done. Remember all the classification stuff that you learned in grade and/or high school; class, order, family, genus, species, etc.? That is sometimes called the Linnaean Taxonomy (after Linnaeus, who obviously had too much time on his hands). So while your boss may think that you are kidding when you say, in an appropriately serious tone “I need to review our taxonomy,” your eighth grader may actually know what you are talking about.

Easy enough so far. However, it gets more interesting; you need to know that specific industries have different taxonomies. This is important! The highly paid consultant may understand the components of taxonomy, but you know your business and its specialized taxonomy—Mister (or Miss) consultant may not. So let’s start with some basics.

The basic rule of taxonomy is that your customer doesn’t have to understand taxonomy, but they do have to easily understand the product of taxonomy. Your product should represent a single concept that is readily understandable to your customer. The product does not have to be a single or multiword term—it just needs to convey a single concept. You must involve your customer in the taxonomy process. In the most basic terms, you need to have a classification of documents and reports that is understandable and you need to know the relationship of the basic taxonomy to the business system.

If you have read any of my articles or sat through any of my presentations you know that I prefer to use practical examples to explain my points, so let’s get back to Waffle House. When you order your eggs—let’s say either scrambled or sunny side up—the important taxonomy is not the eggs, but how your eggs are to be prepared. Christine doesn’t bother to say scrambled eggs; she just says scrambled. To prevent confusion, if you want to have your hash browns mixed up she will say scattered, not scrambled. In the banking business we receive copies of insurance policies. They can be received for a number of reasons, but the insurance policy is not the important taxonomy. If your process involves a loan, then the insurance policy is really collateral. If your process involves wealth management, then the insurance policy is really an asset. This example is called a homograph, which is defined as a term with identical spelling but with different meanings. Here are some more banking-related homographs;

Statement – bank statement, lost card statement
Maturity – certificate of deposit, a dependent when they reach 18
Bond – savings bond, surety bond, investment bond
Note – a memo, a loan contract, currency (hundred dollar note)

The second basic rule of taxonomy is that almost everything has a relationship or is part of a hierarchy. You must pay close attention to the relationship of the document. A promissory note may be part of the following relationship tree Loan, Commercial Loan, Construction Loan, Promissory Note OR Loan, Consumer Loan, Automobile Loan, Promissory Note. There is a significant difference in these two notes in the value, approval process, collateral, and documentation. Many times, your taxonomy will have to include a hierarchy as part of the description or may be delineated through document groups or even descriptive keywords.

Pay attention to Murphy’s law and the KISS principle. Always be aware that the taxonomy must serve the entire company. Allowing your taxonomy to become too esoteric or too loaded with TWA (three word acronyms) may make it easier for one little department, but confuse everyone else. You are part of the entire company and departments tend to be very parochial. Although the X department wants to name one of its reports simply “Summary Reports,” the rest of the company will not know what it is. If you have three departments with “Summary Reports,” you will defeat your own taxonomy.

This should give you a basic understanding of taxonomy. If you want to become are real taxonomist you can start with the ANSI Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies. If you don’t read the 184 pages at least print it or the cover page and place it strategically so that others can see that you have a copy. This will invoke awe or sympathy and evoke comments like “he is really on top of that” or “he really needs to find a hobby.” In any case, here is the link.

If you are starting to find taxonomy exciting then you need to reevaluate your life goals. Another customer has come in and placed their order including hash browns and now Christine will ask “How do you want those hash browns? Covered (with cheese), smothered (with onions), chunked (with ham), diced (with tomatoes), or peppered (with hot peppers)”. Or if you want all of these Christine will just say “train wreck.”

--Rich Payne has been in the industry as a user for 18 years and is noted for making insightful, practical, and humorous presentations. He also serves on the advisory council for Infonomics Magazine. If you have any questions he can be reached at richard.payne@thesouthgroup.com.