by Rick Brenner
We often use the terms crisis and emergency interchangeably. But a distinction is useful in project work.
lthough we often use the terms crisis and emergency interchangeably
in casual conversation, their meanings are not identical. In
this discussion, I'd like to draw a useful distinction between
them, based on their dictionary definitions. According to Merriam-Webster:
The element that distinguishes the two is immediacy. An emergency is acute — the undesirable outcome is here, right now. Immediate action is required. A crisis may also call for action, but the purpose of the action is to prevent a possible outcome.
For example, in 1998, we lived in the context of the Year
2000 software crisis, which did not develop into an emergency.
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