What on earth is a “Workstream”?

A lot of my colleagues thought this would be a good topic for a blog. Do you know what a “workstream” is? Does everyone have the same interpretation of that word? Are you sure? I assume someone, somewhere does, as it is used very widely in many companies (probably driven by some consulting organization!).
Some quick research
I did some quick research and found that this word does not exist in any formal project management methodology (for example PMI, APM, DIN, PRINCE2).
The often quoted Max Wideman glossary makes no mention of it.
A quick scan of the web comes up with comments like this, which was in response to a person asking what the Spanish for “workstream” is:
My guess as to why you are having difficulty pinning down the meaning of the term “workstream” is this extract from a response to a forum question:

I think it is a proper name of various businesses and software packages which is gradually leaking into professional jargon for more general use. I think “workstream” has not yet reached the status of a real word with a settled meaning. I won’t go so far as to suggest that it is meaningless, pretentious jargonspeak. But . . . .

It can’t be translated! This rather explains why, on my work on the new international standard on project management, I haven’t come across it. The International Standards Organisation (ISO) only uses plain English terms from the Concise Oxford English dictionary, which are translatable. The Project Workout is aimed at international readers and so I have taken the view that everything in it should also be translatable.

Even Microsoft Corporation, that great source of jargon and acronyms, doesn’t include the word in its spell checkers.

Looking at real organisations, I have identified “workstream” to be used synonymously with a “department, function or directorate” and a “sub-programme”, which are entirely different dimensions in the classic organisation matrix. I also found it was used to group together virtually any number of unclassifiable clusters of activities.
The Project Workout
The Project Workout does not contain the term “workstream” for all the reasons given above and yet it is in common use, We are not living in George Orwell’s “1984”, so you can use the term “workstream” if you really want to, but if you do use it, consider exactly what you mean and what management procedure would be used to manage it; if you can’t determine that, then you can’t expect anyone else in your team to understand you.

My advice – don’t use it!
I am sure people will still use the term, perhaps because it is such excellent fudge or perhaps it just sounds “cool”, “techno” or even “heroic”! My advice is to avoid using the word, when we have well defined, plain English, alternatives. What do you think?

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