7 process excellence buzz terms you should stop using

Process excellence buzz terms are plentiful, but while many are valuable phrases, some are too vague, inaccurate or outdated for modern process excellence discussions.

Using buzz terms (also known as buzzwords or jargon) in a business setting can have several risks. While they may seem trendy or signal alignment with industry trends, overuse or misuse can lead to real downsides. These can span loss of clarity, confusion, reduced credibility, exclusion, misalignment of expectations and resistance.

This is particularly pertinent when communicating process-related matters to a non-process-focused audience, says Diego Borquez, regional business process manager for Latin America at Pacific International Lines and PEX Network Advisory Board member. “Anything that makes things unnecessarily complex or hard to understand should not be used.” 

7 process excellence buzz terms you should stop using and why

1. Process manual

“I’ve long-despised this term as the endpoint of process modeling,” says J-M Erlendson, chief evangelist and business process expert at ARIS. Typically a hard deliverable, process manuals provide a false sense of security through formatting and ‘compliance to expectations,’ while the content begins to erode the minute it’s printed, he adds.

“Instead, a dynamic interactive process repository designed to contain evolving blueprints and answer essential questions serves the purpose you’re actually looking to satisfy.”

2. Low-hanging fruit

This metaphor is not only tired and overused, but it also suggests a focus on the easy tasks rather than the most impactful ones, says Simon Phillips, thought leader and founder of The Change Maker Group.

“It can also feel dismissive to the effort required for seemingly simple tasks, often by management who have no measure of this.”

3. Continuous improvement

“I think the term continuous improvement has become hollowed out so much it should no longer be used,” says Caspar Jans, head of process management and enterprise modernization GTM for EMEA and APAC at Celonis.

“The reason is that this is now, almost without exception, part of the regular process lifecycle that most business process management (BPM) tools simply support and assume as a given, rather than a deliverable.”

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4. Case modeling

Erlendson says the time has come to retire the term case modeling. “Sure, it can be good to capture the purpose of a process and provide the flexibility to expert workers to decide their best practices, but what it offers is often better represented and more well-adopted in adjacent notations, particularly Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN),” he says.

In fact, Case Management Model and Notation (CMMN) has some additional cognitive load with specific conventions, as well as additional technical burden when it comes to implementation – it’s not as straightforward as logical flows in BPMN. “With the emergence of AI modeling, I think some confluence of the standards will occur, taking from the small amount offered by CMMN and leaning into the transportable BPMN format.”

5. Frictionless

Eliminating every ounce of process friction is neither possible nor worth doing, says Pratik Mistry, EVP tech consulting at Radixweb. Some friction is intentional, as it forces reflection, ensures compliance and prevents blind scaling, he adds.

“If every process were as frictionless as a doom-scroll feed, people would act without thinking. That sounds fun, but it also means skipping necessary checks, missing risks or making irreversible decisions too quickly. A little well-placed friction is what keeps excellence sustainable, so yeah, let’s not try to make everything frictionless.”

6. Synergy

This is one of the most classic and widely mocked business buzzwords. “It’s a vague term used to describe a hoped-for collaboration, but it offers no specifics,” according to Phillips.

It’s a way of talking about teamwork without actually explaining how two or more things will work together to create a better outcome, he adds. “It’s almost always better to use plain language like collaboration or working together.”

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7. Digital twin

It’s been a hot term for a while, but Erlendson thinks the phrase digital twin (or at least the concept) needs a rethink. “It’s a myth that visibility is value. It turns out that knowing something is wrong doesn’t solve the problem and companies have been shilling this no-solution solution for a while.”

It also demands a level of accuracy and completeness that isn’t feasible or useful, he adds. “You don’t need everything and everything doesn’t need to be perfect. This is particularly relevant in the age of agentic AI, where the guidelines and guide rails are so much better for future development than a perfect replication of task-level procedures.”

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