Work and Corporate Team Names

What changes when the name has to survive an email to a client

A work name has two readers, not one. The first is HR, and most people plan for that. The second is a client, an executive or a new starter who encounters the name with no context at all, in a calendar invite or a status report. A name that passes the first and fails the second is the common mistake.

Project teams and standing teams want opposite things. A project name is disposable by design - it should be easy to say, easy to search for in a mailbox, and it will die with the project, so it can afford to be a bit arbitrary. A department or squad name gets attached to people's identities inside the company and appears on org charts for years; it should describe something true rather than something funny.

The test worth applying is the new joiner. Someone who arrives in six months will inherit the name without the story behind it. If the name only works because of a meeting they were not in, they will spend a year not quite being part of the joke, which is the opposite of what a team name is for.

Where these names go wrong

• It is an in-joke with an expiry date. Names built on one incident exclude everyone hired afterwards, and the incident is usually forgotten before the name is.
• It sounds like a different department. If the name suggests work the team does not do, every introduction starts with a correction.
• It cannot be said in front of the client. Anything you would mute yourself to say is a name the team will quietly stop using, leaving it on documents nobody reads.