Project Naming Guide

Introduction

This is a guide about how to name software development projects.

Basics

One of the very first things to do before even starting a software development project, is to give the project a name! If we don't, we'll later find that it's very hard to find initial documentation about it, in emails, word documents, source code, legal contracts and so on.
Finding a good name for a project isn't easy. The following text tells why, and gives some hints.

Naming Considerations

1. Pick the project name very early, before even discussing it further. Even if the project is never launched, it is good to know later what it was that you didn't launch!
2. Make sure the project name is easy to find when using free text search! You will use this method many times to search for the project in emails, documents, source files, revision control systems etc.
3. Never use a person name as project name! It's not nice or efficient to be confused with a project name.
4. Avoid using a location, such as city or room name!
5. If you make the project for a customer, don't use the customer's name or company as part of the project name. Perhaps this would make it easy for you to reference to the project this way, but you'll also communicate the project with the customer. To the customer it certainly won't be a very unique name! And what if the customer asks you to make another project for him/her? Then the first name will appear quite strange!
6. Don't use a project name consisting of more than one word! First - it might cause technical problems with data base names, file names etc. Secondly, a free text search might fail if a system puts a line break between the words. Third: There will always be someone who violates the project name by either concatenating the words, CamelCase it or insert two or even three blanks between them.
7. Pick a neutral name. The project name should not be related to what the project actually does. It's very likely the project will grow beyond the initial plan later.
8. Don't make the project name Case Sensitive, so that you get problems if anyone shifts the casing.
9. Avoid typos by using a name that isn't difficult to spell.
10. Companies have a tendency to be sold or change name. This is another reason for not using a company name as part of the project name.
11. Don't use a long project name! The more letters, the more likely it is that someone will make a typo.
12. It's likely that the project name will make up some part of the development entities, like a file name, database entry etc. This is another reason to keep the project name short.
13. A hint: If you keep developing several projects, define a method for nameing projects, and stick to that method.
14. Notice that there's a difference between internal project names that you use for the project development, compared to the product's model name. The latter is of no concern to you as project manager or developer!
15. Never use the word new as part of the project name (to indicate that this is a remake, or new version, of another project). What would you call the next version or remake?
16. Always think in terms of new versions, special variants, restricted versions and so on, so you know how to name those later.
17. Discuss the project name with customer, they may have another opinion, or might already use this name.

Project Name Usage

Once a project name is picked, here is how it can be used.

1. In source code. Declare the project name in the header comment of each source file.
2. In emails, preferrably as part of the mail subject.
3. Keep the project name intact!
4. Tell your customer to refer to the chosen project name in all discussions and emails etc.
5. Label documentation, media etc. with the project name.
6. Use the project name in project management systems such as Trac, Doxygen, Subversion, GIT, backups etc.

Project Name Examples

• You can use a fixed length sequence such as AAA, AAB, ... ABA as project name, as long as you skip names that can be mixed up with other ordinary words such as CAR, TOM, OLD, FAT, BIG etc.
• If you really have to associate the project name with the customer's name, make an abbreviation of the customer name and add sequence numbers of at least three digits. For example, if your customer is Transmeta, you can use project names such as TRME001, TRME002 etc.
• Chose from a list of known entities, such as names of mountains. But be very careful, it's very likely that some mountains are the same as for individuals. Some series are already used too commonly such as Greek gods, country names, sound tracks, movie names, month names etc.

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