Journal · naming

Event names that survive a reorg

The first week of Reading Product Behaviour is deliberately unglamorous. We print the current event list, however ugly, and we ask who could implement “signup_success_v3” without asking in Slack. In most UK SaaS teams the answer is “the person who left in March”.

Object–action grammar is not fashion. invoice_sent describes a business object and a verb. clicked_cta_2 describes a moment in a particular Figma file. When the marketing site is redesigned, the second name becomes a lie while the warehouse still fills with it.

Versioning belongs in properties or in a documented alias, not in a new verb every quarter. If you must rename, write the old name, the new name, the date, and the owner on one line. That line is the contract. Without it, a new PM will invent a parallel taxonomy and you will spend a year joining two histories in SQL.

We do not pretend this is exciting. It is cheaper than a second tracking plan. If you want the live critique, the flagship studio sits on Tuesday evenings.