I work for a company as a statistician and have been asked for a proper mathematical term for a certain structure, and honestly, I cant think of anything.

We have several groups of people that serve clients. Say group 1, group 2, and group 3. Group 1's primary skill/assignment is the material they encounter day to day with Client 1's business. However, if Group 1 needs some backup that day, Group 2 or Group 3 may have a secondary responsibility/assignment to be capable of providing support.

So, this interchanging structure where each group has a primary skill, but also contains a secondary skill for another group....what would you call such an environment? Say youre a salesman. You company sells 10 products. Your primary responsibility is product#1, but product#1 isnt having a busy day, so youre temporarily assigned to your secondary skill, say product#5.

Everyone has a primary skills but is capable of switching to their secondary skill to help another group when needed.

Any ideas? I was thinking along the lines of hetero/homogenous skills but the two terms are too black and white for this application.

Thanks in advance

12/1/2009 4:58:32 PM

There is no proper mathematical term for this, AFAIK. Highly technical minded people can come up with a name for such a system made up of a few choice technical words joined together to sound all formal and stuff. I can't, though.

12/1/2009 5:01:42 PM

I like primary and secondary, it sounds exactly correct.

other things that come to mind:

major/minor
dominate/non dominate
primary/supplementary
specalized/global
focused/blended


I'm a statistican too! What do you do? I don't have a real clear job description, other than 'increase profitability'

12/1/2009 5:12:23 PM

this doesn't look like any statistics i know...

12/1/2009 5:15:36 PM

Crossfunctional/multifunctional

12/1/2009 5:26:19 PM

^^ Ha, yeah that's about what I do. Mostly just 'baseline performance'.

The big man (boss) used the primary/secondary which is exactly what it is. But. He wants a single word for the entire environment.

If I sell golf clubs at Dicks but also can fill in at the shoe department, and everyone else is in a similar situation, what the hell would a structure like that be called. In a single term. Preferably math-y sounding (Im aware how that sounds).

^I kind of like crossfunctional but think i may need something that implies the primary/secondary nature, not just flexible/multiskill.

I work for an IT company and we have separate groups of people who do IT Service Desk stuff for X Client. So they work on client specific problems. However, if one client/desk is really getting nailed with high volumes, we take someone from another desk and add them to the queue to help out. So something that describes the fact we all have a primary skill, but if the need arises, we have people who can back the primary up (with their secondary skill (who additionally have their own primary which is unrelated))



[Edited on December 1, 2009 at 5:39 PM. Reason : huzzzah!]

12/1/2009 5:28:02 PM

nested responsibilities?

12/1/2009 9:17:58 PM

we use "primary" and "backup"

12/1/2009 9:22:06 PM

corporate jargon

12/1/2009 9:22:16 PM

pliant structure?

12/1/2009 11:07:29 PM

Fluid structure?

Organic service model?

12/1/2009 11:12:02 PM

i bet you'd like an organic service model, wouldn't you, you sick sick freak

12/1/2009 11:16:12 PM

Thanks a lot guys, the help is appreciated.

All of the fluid/pliant/multi-x are good but i think he wants some all inclusive word with a hierarchical connotation.

Nested isnt too bad -- maybe implies some core model/whatever/statisticsdoesntapplyherebutihavetomakeitfit (reduced) for 95% of their day, and the full model (secondary skills included) when needed.

I realize this is a terrible grab and doesnt fit, but i think I have to cram something in that might make sense to him.

He set it up as 'Uhh, say I have a model, like a regression, and I have 3 groups with primary and secondary skills that can interchange with another...whats that called'

Any more help is appreciated

12/2/2009 9:57:52 AM