What does... "end-to-end" actually mean?

No: it is not the great swan song for the world, democracy and humanism after the election of Donald Trump with his godfather Elon Musk in tow. But their methods reflect the principle underlying the term "end-to-end" quite well: developing things holistically and controlling as many processes as possible internally. The "bromance" in the White House will probably soon do the same.

"End-to-end", often abbreviated as E2E, comes from IT and describes a holistic approach there and now also generally in project management, in which a process or system is considered, developed, optimized and controlled from start to finish. It means that all steps of a workflow or application are covered without having to resort to external solutions or subsystems. This is definitely different in the creation of this column.

The end is also the beginning

"Give me the Manfrotto from the flying case!" was my first encounter with technical jargon. I was very young, on my first assignment as a roadie in Zurich's Hallenstadion. The order came from a tattooed muscleman and I didn't understand a thing. He demonstratively opened the black wheelie bin: "Flying case!" Then he tapped a tripod: "Manfrotto!" I memorized: Flying Case = backstage rolling case, Manfrotto = tripod for mounting a follow spotlight.

I never used these technical terms again later. But technical terms have fascinated me ever since and have always accompanied me. I wrote them down in meetings, on train journeys, in canteens and corridors.

For me, technical terms are insignia of knowledge and power. If you know them, you belong, if you look askance when they are mentioned, you are disqualified. Technical terms are used at all hierarchical levels, in every situation of everyday business life, in all areas of life: for demonstration, for confirmation, for exclusion, as an end in itself and occasionally because there is no "normal" term for it.

So in 2007 I started in the NZZ Folio to "translate" dialogs from all kinds of industries under the heading "From the trade" and did so for years. Since 2016 I have been interpreting for m&k (thanks to Anna Kohler, Sarah Willi and Johannes Hapig) Terms that I encountered in the world of advertising, marketing and communication. If I didn't know them, I had them explained to me by experts. Over time, I also got a kick out of asking users about them and embarrassing them. And yes: men tend to brag about technical terms more than women. And they also like to explain technical terms - especially to women, of course. But that's all over now, at least here. After over 150 columns, it's time to stop.

Incidentally, these three terms have attracted the most attention over the years: "Crunchtime", "semi" and "Interpretative order". I was mainly asked about the latter by German colleagues who thanked me for finally understanding what the term means (back to field one), where it comes from (Swiss army) and why things take so long in Switzerland (endless loop).

Crunch time" is back in fashion: when the end of the year comes around and it becomes clear whether agencies can save the year and clients can blow their budgets. But the many clicks on the column in question probably came from a few lost members of the growing crowd of American football fans whose vocabulary "crunch time" comes from - let's be honest.

But "semi" is also topical again, but for personal reasons. It describes a feeling that is creeping around the writer right now, when writing these last lines. On the one hand, I really enjoyed doing it, but on the other, the time has come to stop. But end-to-end is always also a beginning. A beginning of something new that you can already look forward to.

* Benno Maggi, co-founder of Partner & Partner, is handing over his column to Sarah Pally at the end of 2024. Read more here the interview.