Recently, I was at a conclave of NGO Federations.
While moderating a session, I mentioned that we need to consider the eventual positive impact on the beneficiaries, while selecting technologies to enhance the effectiveness of our programs.
One of the attendees wanted to share that the term beneficiary is not fair and we need to adopt a different word, since this seems to indicate that they are at the receiving end.
This person, however, did not have any suggestion for an alternative for this word.
Later in the evening, when I was reflecting on some of the terms we use to characterize a person, in the context of a service, it struck me that we may need to relook at a few of the terms that are very common in the IT industry.
First, the term ‘user’.
While all of us have accepted this to be the term that indicates a person who engages with a software solution, we also had to mention, sometimes, that it could be an ‘end user’, possibly implying that there could be some intermediate users.
Someone once remarked that another ‘industry’ that uses this term [pardon me, could not find an alternative to the term use’, here] is also connected with getting people addicted.
Even for software solutions, we used to hear that we need compelling, engaging and addicting approaches to retain the base of persons who interact with the software. [I am trying my best to avoid ‘user’! 
]
Now, if i said the beneficiary of the software, would that be fair?
After all, the person benefits from the solution, right?
Realizing that addictive software is toxic, we talk of digital detox sessions.
When we look to other service professions – a person who visits a doctor is called a patient.
A person visiting a lawyer is a client. this term is probably applicable in the context of many other service professions – haircutters, beauticians, realtors and so on.
The question for you, reader, is – do you have any suggestions for alternative terms that are more representative?
The second word I would like to open up is ‘resource’.
While the department that handles [are the staff handlers? – which, again has different implications in other contexts] matters related to employees is usually called the department of Human resources, the first word is often forgotten and the humans are treated as any other resources.
‘I need more resources to complete the project’
‘The risk I see in this project is to retain the resources, as it is is a long duration engagement.’
and so on..
Would it not be better to use a term person or some other term that may indicate their role – developer, architect, tester, business analyst etc?
The third term may not be in the same league, but over time, has become a bad word or a non-preferred word – and that is ‘grooming’.
Having its origins from the days when horses were taken care of well and ‘groomed’ to be made more presentable, but later applied in the context of undesirable actions to ‘groom’ a person, particularly a child, it has become a non-preferred word for the activity of making the requirements clearer for the development teams.
The preferred term now is refinement, as in backlog refinement.
There have also been stories of opposition and organizations making changes to some of their documentation in the use of terms such as backlist/whitelist to allowed/blocked list, master [as in master/slave – architecture that is sometimes also referred as client/server], though scrum master has become an acceptable term.., terms that have a specific gender-sounding part: man-hours to person hours..
Now, coming back to the question on beneficiaries..
Would any of the following terms be more respectful?
Community member, citizen, person etc?
