Simple^4 Xiaoming Wang

Talking about Agile practice, people might say that it is a better way to develop a project or product because with this practice, the team increasingly add value to the users or customers. The difference between software development of a product and project is that a project has explicit user and customer targets but product. Clearly Agile has advantage in facing unspecific requirements, and eliciting requirements. In Agile, we can not tolerate indistinct business/requirement analysis based on assumption. We want to know what user/customer really want, what their basic requirement are, what they prefer to have or nice to have. So during the software development life cycle customers can see the value in very beginning period and users can help the team to improve the project in a very positive way.

Compared with project, product development have two major difference. First, for a product, there are target customers while potential customers as well. Even ideally we can interview all the target customers (in practice, it is really not that possible) we still can not have all the requirement explicitly there. So assumption is inevitable. Basically assumption bases on product manager and business analysis’ experience, maybe domain experts could contribute too. The other reason is that a product must be very creative from marketing perspective. You can imagine that a product without a few new idea would never be bought by consumers except you have great price advantage. For example, iPod would not be able to interview every single customer in order to achieve his satisfaction. Microsoft would not lead the marketing if they was trying to collect the requirement from millions of real users. Obviously, they did interview people, had lots of research before they decided to approach this new functionalities.

So, is Agile the right way in software product development? The answer is YES. However, you can not follow all the rules in Agile. And eXtreme Programming, pair programming, scrum, TDD also work here as good practice because they do not depend on requirement analysis results. All the advantage of Agile can be taken in the team such as flexible and fast changing direction.

Bear in mind, the core spirit of a product is creative and different. Sometimes we have to abandon the rules, policies with the price of high risks. In this case, risk management should be highly concerned.

From project management theory there might be no argument that a project
manager is the one who manages a project via the full project life
cycle. In IT projects, especially software development project it is even
more typical, project manager is in charge the whole thing.

However in those multi-million dollar projects, such as energy, chemical or hydrocarbon, there was a Project Management Team (PMT) who manages the project rather than a single person (project manager). The advantage of doing it in this way is that people who have different expertise should be responsible for their own areas and have the power to make decision across the whole project. Of course project manager is the one who coordinate these experts and make them work as a team. For instance, project controller, cost manager, procurement manager, HSE manager, and etc should play a totally different role and have the power to rule the project from his perspective. In the project that I used to work on, it worked very well by this model. It was a hydrocarbon project called LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) project with more than 1 billion budget and about 5 years duration. The project manager has huge trust on each discipline who is expert in his own area with years of experience. So it turned out to be project manager plays an coordinator’s role and focused on managing risks, changes and resources.

The same model can be applied to Agile project management too. Fortunately, there are some practices already, such as letting dev drive the estimation of stories, QA being in charge of the test strategies and plans. Furthermore, there are other issues that could be considered to be managed by PMT rather than project manager. Actually there is nothing that should only be managed by PM and for each discipline, the decision should be made by the expert with expertise.

So it would be the responsibilities of all the team members of managing a project. Everyone plays a role in managing a project and makes decision. Meanwhile all the decision should be made by certain discussion and communication with the whole team. For example, let developers drive and own all the development tasks, let QA own all the testing and deployment tasks and let IM/BA own all the customers requirement tasks, iteration planning. Every team should play a role in the risk management, change management and project controlling.

In this case how important is a project manager in a team and what should a project manager responsible for and focus on. Basically a project manager is responsible for coordinating a team of talents, supervising cost controlling, people management, team build and etc. Certainly a project manager is crucial in a project however with absence of a project manager the project is still can be carried by project team with self-management. The idea of doing it is to ensure that there is not absolute key person for a project.

Someone one might argue how could make it happen in real life and real projects? The answer is that you have to bring the right people to the project and let them do the right thing.

A project manager or lead might be the most goofy guy in a team but he is the one to organize and coordinate a group of talents people to work together. This is his expertise!

Eight weeks ago, I joined ThoughtWorks as a Business Analysis. Now, I am writing this post to talk about some ideas of Agile project management what the best practice of Agile project management could be in my opinion.

The most interesting topic of Agile software development practice is project controlling. It is fairly difficult to see how the controlling works compared with traditional software project management. Talking about project control, which includes schedule, cost control change and risk management. In most of the cases, a cost controller(or PM) is responsible for make the cost control strategy align with the schedule control methodology. So, how to do cost control in Agile project?

Let’s talk about the schedule in Agile project first. It relies on the control of iteration schedule, velocity, time box for spike and etc. The duration of an iteration that matches estimation will be considered as how long an iteration was supposed to be done. Plus time box strategy. But we do not see how resource, time and cost related to each other. So how could a project is managed without considering of these three key factors and the relationship of these three key factors?

Actually, there is a methodology called CTR which can solve out the problem in practice. It is fairly easy to understand the theory but really need much practice to make it work well during the whole project life circle . In other word, it requires many “Go-Bys” to improve the system. How does CTR work in Agile project? Let’s have a look how CTR works in traditional project management.

CTR stands for Cost-Time-Resource. One item of CTR comes from the experience of many projects and practice of the industry. The definition of a standard CTR is that to complete one standard workload-man-hour how much cost-time-resource it requires. The system collect average CTR across projects then get an average value of it. Also CTR need to be maintain up-to-date.

Let’s have a close look at why we need CTR and how CTR works on an Agile project.

When we estimate the duration of an iteration, instead, we can estimate the CTR of an iteration, even of a release. For example, a standard CTR means one standard cost+ one standard time+ one standard resource. An iteration might need 20 CTR in order to complete it. So for Tom and Jerry pair, they are supposed to complete 10 CTR and Joey and Ross are supposed to complete the other 10. Tom and Jerry can contribute 2 standard resource+1 standard time+ 1 standard cost. 2*1/1=2. It is 2 CTR for Tom and Jerry to work one pair hour. Ross and Joey pair can contribute 4 standard resource + 1 standard time + 2 standard cost. 3*1/2=1.5. So it is 1.5 CTR for Joey and Ross to work one pair hour. The reason is that Ross is a senior and can contribute more, at the same time, he costs more. So there are options here, we need use more high value/cost resource if it is not against resource development.

OK, as I said the standard CTR comes from previous project experiences and industry practice. So it really require lots of project experience in order to have a more valuable CTR. Fortunately, some companies have been working in this business for more than 10 years. The standard CTR can be calculated into a reasonable value. So the workload of each iteration can be trade off as amount of CTR, we can call it IterationCTR. What a project manager/iteration manager or project controller need do is to make sure the amount of CTR that they spend does not beyond IterationCTR, so that the budget is under control. It means that project manager need put right resource on the right job, especially those senior people.

Certainly, a project manage not only control the CTR, there are lots of other mission need him and the team to complete. About project schedule and cost control, there are still two things that we can do to guarantee the project is in good shape.One is change management and the other is risk management.

How to do change and risk management, I will talk later. Meanwhile, some other topic about Agile project management will come out sooner or later. They are

• Project manager and Project manage team.
• Remote project management
  
• How to manage customer
• How can BA play a more important role in Agile project

VISA application and ticket, hotel booking

ThoughtWorks handled VISA application. TW is the the member of chamber of American commerce. So it is pretty easy to get the
business VISA. However interview is compulsory. It took 120 minutes for me to get to the font of the queue and only 15 seconds to get the VISA. Really crap. Next thing, ticket, UA return tickets. Hotel, Club Quarter. There are two Club Quarter in Chicago. One is in Center Loop and the other is in Wacker Street.So, UA850, arrived local time 16:16. The texi driver who was booked by TW US did not show up. My colleague and I managed to get a texi to the hotel in Adams Street. A Korean driver, male age around 55. The reason that we found out his nationality is that he answered his cell with “Yaobusaiao”. 40 minutes later, after big traffic jam, we
arrived at our destination, about 40 bulks bill and at least 10 percent tip. The guy even asked for tip. I gave him 5 bulks. I thought that the tip was included in the bill. I did not know that American people add tax too the original bills.

OK. Day 1.

Tried to access TW office in Randolf RD. Failed. The security is bloody tough. If you are not in the list, no entry!So the only choice for us is to walk around the downtown and have some fun. Fortunately, there was a Blue Jazz concert in the Millennium Park in front of our office. Great stuff! Dinner, subway, meatball sandwich. Reminded me my British memory.

Experience Summary:

Before you go, you need prepare following things:
Valid U.S.A Visa, passport, ID card.
A mobile phone which can call internationally.
All your contact in Beijing and Chicago, including your driver’s number, emergency contact.
Learn how to pronounce the name of your company and hotel in English. well Chicago English.
Ensure that you name is in the list of visitors of your company at your arrival date.
Bring some snacks for your colleagues.

Day 2.

Moved to CQ hotel in Wacker street. 38th Floor which is the top of the tower building. Very beautiful view. I will stay in this room
for the next two weeks. Very exciting! Meet my workmates in this TWI. Got badge for the building. Bought a big map of Chicago by the help of Christina (Thanks a lot!) and had Guinness in  elephant  & Castle which is a
very nice pub with my colleague in Chicago office. People here are really nice. Then had one bulk hotdog in 7-11 for dinner. When we had dinner it was already 11PM. No other stores or restaurants  still  opened at that moment.

Experience Summary:

Most of the restaurants and store closed before 10pm and open after 10am.

Day 3.

Saturday, great,  cool and  nice.  We went to Chicago culture center not on purpose. But it changed everything.Why? It is the information center of Chicago tourism. First, we found out that there was a train tour sponsored by Chicago Architecture Association. It is FREE and brilliant. Basiclly we took this metro and traveled around downtown three rounds of loop line. The presentation lasted about 20 minutes. Pointer was available and very helpful. Second, we met this lady (black) in the information center. She recommended us to by a ticket called CityPass for
5 attractions including 4 museums. Also, we knew where the gallery district was and how to take FREE trolley  to the museums. The map was free too. So we were so stupid to buy an expensive map.Yeh, after the train tour, we had the famous Chicago Jumbo hotdog for breakfast. I had never had this special dog before. I got to do it again. Actually I did in the next day. Next stop Navy pier. Boat, boat, and boats, Chicagomen are rich, there are so many boats in Lake Michigan. From the beach I cal see the who Chicago, tower, tower and towers magnificent! Then we took a water texi from Navy pier to Sears tower which was the tallest in the states.
From, Sears tower to gallery district was a long way. But it was worth the distance. The gallery was great. different arts along the
two sides of the street. quite a few Chinese artist.Everyone can show ans sale his art there. From art gallery to water tower. you will
see that those equipments were made about 200 years ago and still support the water supply of people in downtown. when we came back we did not have any energy. Suddenly, I found out that I did not have an adapter for my English mobile phone charger. OK, 10 bulks was out. Bloody expensive! The store is called Radiostack, down the Michigan Ave.

Experience Summary:

Always go to information center before you do anything else or make travel plans. It is very helpful. Sometimes there might be surprises for you.
Buy a CityPass, save more than 40 dolors.
Buy an universal adapter in China.
Don’t buy a map, you can get a free one in Information center.

Day 4:
Museum day!!!! We had jumbo hotdog, Chicago style and grill for breakfast. Free trolley to the museum campus. We visited two, Adler Planetarium Astronomy Museum and Shedd Aquarium. No time for the third one. Plan had to be changed. Next weekend will be very tough. Had Chicago style Italian Pizza which was called Stuffed Pizza. So tasty. House salad, coke and root-bear as beverage, small Pizza and garlic bread as main course, cheese cake and ice-cream as dessert. The cheese cake so creamy, best ever! Well the pizza is special, I can not tell, but before you try it you would not be able to imagine.

Experience Summary:
Those museums are worth going and the Pizza is great!

Day 5:

Immersion for the whole day. Talked about TW history, interestin stuff. Went to the most famous steak in Chicago, called Chicago Chop house. Very big steak and tasty. I was not able to finish it. The steak comes with side salard, french toast and potato pancake. We walked to the Hancock tower but it was so cloudy and we gave up going to the top of the building. Experience iPhones in Apple store. It is so brilliant and great HCI design!

Experience Summary:

Don’t eat too much toast, otherwise you won’t be able to finish the whole steak.

Don’t go to Sears Tower or Hancock when it is raining or about to rain.

Day 6

Immersion the whole day, talked about marketing and business. Ling came to see me from NYC. We had the stuffed pizza again with sausage and pineapple ingredients. Tasted better than last time. Also walked through the parks along the coast of Michigan Lake.

Day 7

Immersion the whole day, talked about business and contract. Had Jumble dog again. walked to Water tower and found that there was a so called “beach” north to the Navy Pier. The sand is soft. From the beach, observing the beautiful night view of Chicago is really enjoyable and fun. There are a couple of stars in the sky tonight, oh wait, planes.

Experience Summary:

If you see a star which is moving, it is probably a plane or helicopter.

Day 8

Ling headed back to NYC and immersion the whole day of risk management and project inception.

Some comments which are very useful.

You should stop by the Park Grill at Millenium Park and have a Kobe burger — one of the best cheeseburgers in town.  Stop by The Back Door on Rush Street later at night and you will hear some fine jazz.

Yep, we had Kobe burger for dinner. It is said that it was the best cheeseburger in Chicago, I would say  that  it might be.  It is  certainly not  as good as the one I had in Grandma ’s kitchen back to Beijing.

Experience Summary:

Something is great for 99% of people might not for me.

Day 9

Friday, weekend, immersion all day with business process modeling and individual coaching. Got off a bit earlier, we tried to make the way to the Field museum. Unfortunately, we were 10 minutes late. 4:10PM. The last administration was 4:00pm. So, we changed the plan to Chicago Art Institue which turned out to be great! Claude Monet, Perre Auguste Renoir, and Gustave Caillebotte’s painting are absolutely gorgeous! Also, those gates, windows and sculptures stands out as the treasure of Chicago. We bought some cards of paintings as souvenirs.  Next stop, Hancock tower, 94 floors. The elevator rised up as speed 20 miles/hour, unbelievable! Even more unbelievable, you can see the view of Chicago and other four states from the top of the building. I mean each side, north, east, south and easy. We went there around evening, so that we saw Chicago from 94th floor in daylight and evening.

Experience Summary:

Go the Hancock around evening, so that you will see Chicago in daylight and evening.

There is no cell phone signal on the top of Hancock. So if your sweetheart would call you around that time, explain to her before you go or bring her with you.

There is a cheescake factory under the Hancock building. There were always millions of people waiting. So be prepared before you go. Bring a book or your ipod.

On the way to Hancock building, there is Apple store, try the latest the iPhone will be fun.

Day 10

It is a beautiful day. Stop one, Science and Industry museum. One interesting thing is that we actually felt the Boeing 727 and almost every details of the aircraft. Also the military naval vessel is pretty cool. However the most impressive thing is that we watched the video of moving the aircraft and vessel into the museum. One of the most difficult thing to do!

Around noon my best friend and his gf came to see me after 6 hours drive from Ames. So happy :-). We went to that River and Lake Cruise. It was $20 each and lasted about 90 minutes. The boat went down to the entry of the lake. There was a lock which is performing some role of transferring  the boats between Chicago river and Michigan lake. After viewing the whole Chicago from the lake we headed back the Chicago river. A good presentation was made by Jason who came from the Navy. It was actually his first time to do it but he did so well. He talked about all the history, architectures and interesting stories of Chicago. Thank u Jason!

Saturday night, China Town, yeh! Fan(my best friend) finally got his Bai Jiu(a Chinese alcohol without colour). We went to the Si Chuan restaurant which is called Lao Si Chuan. It looks very nice but there was no table available. So we changed our mind and had the Cantonese food right besides the Si Chuan restaurant. It turned out to be very good. Best meal we had in these two weeks. Even not I am still missing that place. recommended!

Experience Summary:

There are different cruise in Chicago, most of them starts from Navy pier. But the one under Michigan Ave is the best, 20 bulks including the tour of both lake and river.

If you really want to have good Chinese food, go to the two restaurants that I mentioned above.

Day 11

Premium Outlet for the whole morning, big financial damage. Nike, Wilson, Swarovski,  Tommy  and etc… so many choices.  Later  after  spending most of my pocket money, we  went to the Field museum which is OK but not interesting to me.

Experience Summary:

Only bring cash with you (NO credit cards or debit cards) when you go to an Outlet, so you can control the budget easily.

Most of the cool shoes do not have size in 8 in Nike store. What a pity!

There are some under-value staffs in Wilson.

Don’t trust GPS, trust map and Liang Qiao!

To be continued…..

Flickr is one of the best online photo sharing Website which was blocked by GFW recently.
I do not want to argue the reasons or how stupid Chin-gov is! But you can refer to a tread
of my friend cokee’s blog.

Fortunately a walk around has already been there for Flickr+Firefox users to access their
photo album without any trouble.

The Firefox add-on is called Access Flickr, current version 1.5 by Hamed Saber who is
an awesome guy! Access Flickr support Firefox:
2.0a1 – 3.0a5 currently and released

Version 1.5 — June 2, 2007 — 18 KB

Iran, UAE, Saudi Arabia, China and other banned countries and places… banned Flickr!
Shame on those countries!!

China, check who you are standing with!!!!

Thanks Firefox, Open source and Flickr users!

UK is one of the dream lands of young boys and girls for education. Not only because there is the best are educational system on the planet but there are friendly hosts, fabulous living environment and good job opportunities.It is legal to work in the UK by holding a student VISA. Please check the legal statement below and be aware of the terms and conditions.

Having been granted leave to remain as a student, there is no objection to you to taking part time job or vacation work. However, while you may work full-time during vacation periods, you must not work more than 20 hours per week during term-time, expect where the placement meets the definition of a sandwich course or an internship. As a student, you must not engage in business, self-employment or the provision of services as a professional sportsperson or entertainer; and you must not pursue a career by filling a permanent full-time vacancy.

There are different part time job opportunities available for students to choose. They have been organized into the categories and illustrated in the Fig A:

Fig A

From Fig A, we can see there are plenty of chances in the universities and Chinese or anti-Chinese business.

As well there are different job seeking mechanism generally. See the Fig B for more information:

Fig B

It seems that the job seeking mechanism is not as much as available jobs. Basically, “Ask help from A friend” and “Go to the job centre” will be the two efficient ways to get a job successfully. Although the accurately number has not been calculated based on certain surveys readers can still see how many ways to get a part time job.

The relationship between the job seeking mechanism and Work categories is illustrated in the Fig C:

Fig C

From the three diagrams we can clearly see the points below:

• University jobs will be applied only in its own framework
• If you want to work in a restaurant or as a cleaner “Ask for help from a friend” would be a good choice.
• For the Anti-Chinese job opportunities go for the job centre or newspapers for more information.
• Sometimes, students can directly visit the shops, restaurants and ask if they need staffs to do part time jobs.

Generally the process of getting a job will be:

1. Look for job vacancies information
2. Contact the job opportunities publisher or employer
3. Try to get an interview
4. Sign a contract
5. Get pay and your payslip every week or month

OK, last thing, payment. Different job has different value, so the employer will pay differently. The experience told us that Chinese teacher and working in university normally would get more money than any other business. Chinese restaurant would always be the last place to work because the pay is a piece of shit.

Cleaner is probably a good job for lots of new comes. You do not have to speak English frequently and the money is not bad compared with the jobs in restaurant. Key job has its advantages because you do not have to work in a solid hours. However it is not easy to get one.

Tips:

• Working experience is important. If you do not have some, at least pretend you do.
• Chinese students, always join a working environment without Chinese people around, otherwise your English would never been improved rapidly.
• As fast as possible call your interested employer when you get information from Friday AD, other newspapers or job centre.

Reference

Friday AD: http://www.friday-ad.co.uk/

Job centre: http://www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk/JCP/index.html

Definition

Consulting business has been getting more and more market share across industries.

IT giants (Oracle, IBM, HP, SAP, SAS, Accenture etc ) have been doing this business for quite a long time. Most of the big enterprises have benefit from those IT consulting service by improving their management of Information system.

There are still lots of medium size companies and manufacture in south of China don’t have good ISIT strategies and Management system. Focusing on these customers, this would be an busness point.

Above, the possibilities of creating a new business growing point are obvious. Then how to run the business, in another word how to run an ISIT consulting company has been put on the table.

There are three keys for running such a business. They are “Client”, “Contract” and “Resources”.

Obviously, Client is the most important one of the three. No client, no contract , resources would be useless.

Client — Satisfaction

• Client’s satisfaction. KFS, in order to achieve Client’s satisfaction, there are several things we need to accomplish.

1. Create benefit which can be seen in Client’s finacial report
2. Cut down CTR
3. Management team and employees satisfaction.
4. Accomplish deliverables on time.

• What does Client really wants? It really does matter. Sometimes, Client is not 100% sure what they want. Consultant has to help Client to produce an equirement report.
• How Client want the deliverable to be delivered? Sometimes, consultant did an excellent job but did not deliver it in a right way. For example, Client want all the documents to be deliver in a Website with doc lib but we might deliver it in a hard copy. Although there are nothing different for the deliverables.
• Communication. Could not be less important. Before everything has been started, clarify the resposibilities of everyone involve in the project and build more than one communication tunnel and set up interface in the process of communication.

Contract — Achievable and different

• Contract template, don’t have to talk too much about it. A professiona template is enough.
• Bottom line, what we can do. What we can do in the period of contract.

1. Promise only what we can do and do well.
2. Know what we can learn and do well in a period of time (contract period)
3. Never tell Clinet what we can not do, but what we are not professional at.

• Breakdown into different phases

1. Break down contract into different phases, if the contract is too hard to be negotiated.
2. At least get one phase of the contract and try to get all the phases of the contract.
3. Avoid doing the phase that we are not good at.

• Budget of the contract, get a good negotiator to deal with. Any other good way?
• Market price, be aware of the market price of the business, try to know other biders’ bid in the competition
• Shining points, something different with other competitors. Something that they would care, maybe.

Resources: MIS + knowledge database + People — All of them are crucial

1. MIS (ERP) — Finance + PM + HR + File server (Document lib) + Website + Simple CRM + Software dev environment (Optional, for fun). MIS is for ourselves, for the continuing improvement and growing.
2. Knowledge database — Web based application with portal. “Tools”
3. People — Consultant, has to be or have

• • • Team player,
    • Business sense
    • Never stop learning.
    • Good code of English and Mandarin.
    • At least be professional in one scientific area.
    • Have more than one hobby.

Project management

It is a complicated topic, refer to A Guide To The Project Management Body of Knowledge

Key factors of success

Deliverables, credit, partner + relationship

For cooperation, policies:

1. There is no difference between employees. (Wal-mart)
2. Be creative, do things differently (BOC)
3. Open working environment (Platform)
4. Work as a team, there is only one team! (Tesco)
5. Everyone is talent. (From me?? haha)
6. Treat everyone as treat your self, life as one family (Tesco + Dalian Loco)

Notes and Definitions

Three and half years could lift you up to the heaven or trap you down in the hell.

Three and half years could pass in one mini second or last for a century.

Three and half years could make you a hero or an absolute loser.

To make the salary increasing happen you have to learn being a decision maker, problem solver and hard worker. To get better pay we need get a better job which is the way to make money legally. So how to get a better job is what we called career development plan.

Initial phase

Analysis your personality, evaluate your capability and choose a career area and career goal. For example, you could do IT, project management, finance, accounting or sales. Become a manager before 30, to become executive team before 40.

Second phase

Improve your capability, open your mind and save credit. For example, further education, get some co-op opportunities, do some training in your current job. On the other hand, try different job positions, get to the management positions, or work in different countries and locations.

Last phase

Continuing improvement

If you have problem to get a job please check out my previous posts on how to get a job.

If you can not make a decision please contact me by e-mail

So that we can analyze your requirement and help you make the correct decision, whatever about which subject you should learn, what job you should apply. If you want to know who you should date, please go for Ben. I got advices from him.

Some tips would help if you bear those in mind.

• Be confident, and always tell the truth so that you would not be over-confident.
• Try to do everything perfectly and never loose yourself a little bit.
• Always, always work as a team rather than individually.
• Enjoy your life whatever it is in sunshine or miserable.
• Never stop trying even it did not seem like an opportunity.
• Learn from everyone around you. Everyone could know more than you do in a particular topic or subject.
• Never trust what people told you, believe what you saw, what they did.
• You are the only person you can trust and depend on not anyone else.
• Be nice to everyone even you do not like him.
• Care about your family, friends and treat everyone as treat yourself.
• Create a comfortable living environment although you have to spend more on it.

Persuasive talks

It’s important to know our purpose when we stand up to speak.

Many speakers believe that they are simply presenting information. In reality, they want their listeners to use that information to take action, so their talks are actually persuasive.

Most persuasive talks do not involve changing the direction of a corporation. But they typically persuade people to make/take some changes, big or small. The change of the whole development process, or the change of one step in the process. The change from using C to C++, or the change of adding more comments to source code. The listeners of the persuasive talks can be top managers, department managers, colleagues, or subordinates.

As the persons who suggest the changes, we have unusual opportunities:

• To stand out and be remembered as the persons who advocate the changes.
• To make an impact on our organization and be well recognized.
• To advance our own career within the department or company.

Effective speakers do more: They bring a passion and commitment to what they are saying. This passion is infectious. It spreads to the audience and keeps them involved and excited about the speaker’s topic, even through a long presentation. This excitement is called energy.

Energy is enthusiasm and passion for our message. Energy should fill our entire delivery so the audience will more readily remain focused on us and what we have to say.

Studies show that a few days after attending a presentation, most of us remember only about 5% of it. It’s not surprising. With all the information we receive in a week, it’s a wonder that any of it really sticks with us. Information is constantly being thrown at us in meetings, company reports, magazine and newspaper articles, TV and radio programs, and on the Internet. Sometime it’s hard to remember what we read yesterday.

If our listeners will only remember 5% of a presentation, we need to make sure that the 5% include the central message. It is the core of a presentation. Everything else is just supporting data.

When we prepare a presentation, the first thing is to think what the audience want to know, so the information should be presented from the listeners’ point of view, not the speaker’s.

The audience usually want to know WIIFM (what’s in it for me?). They want to know:

• How will it benefit me?
• How can I use this information in my job?
• Why is the central message relevant to my life?
• What does it mean to my future here?
• What is the impact of the message on how I do my job?

We need to make the presentation relevant to the audience, or make it meaningful to the audience.

Verbal skills:

• Develop a clear central message for the presentation.
• Make the presentation relevant to the audience (WIIFM).
• Gather evidence to support the central message.
• Organize the information (opening, message/evidence, and closing).

Visual skills:

• Make eye contact to connect with listeners.
• Use gestures to describe and emphasize ideas.
• Use facial expressions to communicate feelings and attitudes.

Vocal skills:

• Raise and lower voice level for emphasis.
• Change pacing to stimulate audience’s interest.
• Use pauses to make important points.

We all agreed that we want to USE the 3V skills on daily basis so that we become effective speakers.