How to give an Amazing Business Presentation?

We spend plenty of our time creating a product or launching a service, we put all our efforts and then we go to the customer to sell it, but in the end it gets rejected. Why? Where are we failing?

Of-course, the way we are presenting it. It is very important we communicate our ideas well.
In order to communicate them well, We should have the ability to present them in an impressive manner.

Below are the 10 points that can help an individual present well. Let's have a look on How to give an Amazing Business Presentation?

1. Set a Goal for your presentation:We should have a proper focus and goal for our presentation. We should not randomly talk about it. We should structure it in a proper manner, giving the proper table of contents. When audience start listening to a presentation, the first question that arise in their mind is Why we should buy this product? or buy this service? or Why it's even worth listening? Second is, What are you talking about? It's important that speaker makes the audience understand this during the first sections of the presentation. 
2. Understand your Audience: It is very important we place ourselves on the seats of our audience. Look at it from audience perspective, What they want to listen? Why they should listen? What they will understand? Knowing the audience is the key to a good presentation.
3. 10-20-30 Rule: It's a PowerPoint rule given by Guy Kawasaki. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. (Reference: http://guykawasaki.com/the_102030_rule/)
4. Make it Interactive: No-one wants to sit for hours and listen to a person. People nowadays want to interact. They want to ask questions, get clarifications. Make your presentation interactive so it keeps the audience indulged.
5. Talk with the Mind and not just reading out PowerPoint Slides: Don't read your PowerPoint slides. They are for audience and not for the speaker. They should be kept simple enough. 
6. Try telling stories: Everyone likes stories instead of statistics. Stories are the very interesting way of keeping your audience indulged. It helps build emotional connection between the audience and your topic.
7. Arrive Early: Reaching the stage at the eleventh hour and then setting up the projector, opening up your laptop, is not a good practice when audience are waiting to hear from you. Arrive early, make yourself comfortable and start confidently. A good start often leads to good presentation.
8. Maintain Eye Contact: Don't just read out the stuff. Talk, Interact with your audience. Maintaining eye contact is very important to show that the speaker is confident enough in presenting as it makes the audience believe the presenter.
9. Talk Slow: Less confident and nervous speakers often talk fast. Talk slowly, take pauses, it will help your audience understand you well.
10. Practice! Practice! Practice! An old saying, Practice makes the men perfect. Keep practicing so at the final presentation, we are well prepared.

Hope it helps. All the Best for your Presentation!

Meeting your Project Deadlines!

What are the 3 constraints every customer is concerned about the most?

Well, these are Time, Cost and Quality. For every project, it's very important to meet the deadlines. Each hour, minute and second is important for a project.

It is always advised to plan ahead!

There are several measures we should take care in order to meet project deadlines.

1. Clarify the deadline with the customer: Make sure you understand the deadline given by customer. Generally, customers are having a due date of their own in order to launch a product or a service. Make sure you negotiate the deadline with the customer well.
2. Make a plan: Analyze the requirements in detail. Breakdown the work into smaller tasks. Estimate the requirements well to come up with due dates. Make sure internal due dates are prior the due dates being given to the client.
3. Never Over Commit: Never make over commitments. Always plan to commit less and deliver more. Spend time during estimations to make sure you provide them with greater accuracy rather than just ballparks.
4. Always take buffer time: Give yourself an extra time. We never know when it's internet issues or networks goes down or any other software or hardware related issues. It is always advisable to take around 10-15% of buffer time while estimating.
5. Identify Risks: Make sure you identify risks at each stage of the project. If a risk is known earlier, it can be handled well.
6. Execute the plan: In order to make sure you execute your plan well, make sure you note down all the due dates that are visible to all the team members. Everyday team should know if they are on schedule or not. Also, they should know what is expected from them and when it is expected.
7. Track the progress on daily basis: It's not good to know about the challenges at eleventh hour. A project manager should track the project progress on daily basis in order to know the challenges, task due dates. Each team member should be aware if they are on schedule or not.
8. Communicate Challenges on time: Each team member should be proactive enough to communicate the challenges on time during project life cycle. They should not wait for the due date to communicate it.
9. Keep customer in loop: It is important to make the customer aware of the challenges/risks coming along the way. They should know prior if we are going to deliver it on time or not. It should not be a surprise for them.
10. Keep learning and improving: As you keep working on the project meeting the due dates, keep learning about making more accurate estimations, more effective communication, better planning and execution.

Scrum in the Real World

If you Google Scrum methodology, you will get hundreds of results talking about it's definition etc... However, when we talk about Scrum in the real world, it means we are actually interested in the execution of scrum.

Scrum consists of number of sprints that will take place for incremental delivery of potentially shippable product. Let's have a look at how this sprint cycle works.

Sprint Planning

This is the first event/activity that takes place at the start of sprint. Product Owner, Scrum Master and the Team have a look at the requirements and create a stack of work called as Sprint backlog that they can complete within a sprint. Sprint Backlog is a set of tasks that team commits to complete and deliver by the end of the sprint.

Sprint backlog takes the shape of user stories and then user stories are further converted into tasks.

Daily Scrum

These tasks are then further being given to the team for implementation. Teams are self managed. They meet everyday for 15 minutes and talk about 3 items. What they did yesterday? What are they working on today? Any impediments or challenges they are facing? These meetings are time-boxed and are never extended. If further discussion is required, then follow up meetings are being scheduled.

It is the responsibility of Scrum Master to take care of these impediments team is facing and log them to project management tool. Report to the product owner and work on getting these resolved.

Ending the Sprint

Sprints always end on time. They are time-boxed. It's the responsibility of the team to complete the work with the definition of "Done" within the sprint. Definition of Done is the agreed upon definition for completion of the work  between product owner and the team. Generally it includes that the product will be fully developed and tested and is potentially shippable product increment.

Sprint Review

This is the event that takes place at the end of the sprint. Team gathers together along with Scrum Master and the Product Owner and inspect and adapt the product and the quality of the potentially shippable product increment. They meet and review together, Product Owner provides it's feedback if any.

Sprint Retrospective

This is another event for looking after how the previous sprint was. Whole team inspect and adapt the process. They note down the changes they can make for making the upcoming sprints better.

And the Sprint cycles goes own with each sprint delivering the potentially shippable product increment thus resulting into Product Development and successful deliveries of the project.

Scrum Methodology

Scrum Methodology

Scrum is one of the most popular project management method these days. If we talk about Software development life cycle, Scrum is the one which people are using these days. Top companies are using scrum as their project management techniques.

What is Scrum?

Scrum is basically an iterative & incremental software development approach. It is one of the most popular Agile methods.

Scrum emphasis on customer involvement from starting till the end of the software development life cycle enabling customers to get hands on experience on the software.

Unlike waterfall, scrum allows us to ensure customer involvement in every duration of 1-4 weeks. This particular cycle of duration is called as Sprint. Before understanding the Scrum process, Let’s have a look at 3 Scrum Roles:

1. Product Owner: The one who decides “What needs to be built?“. Product Owner as the name says, is the owner of the product. This is generally a person from client end. Product Owner is one of the most important stake holder of Scrum project. What needs to be built and in what order, deciding the priority is another important aspect which is fulfilled by the product owner.
2. The Team: The team consists of “Cross-Functional” & “Self-Organized” team members. Unlike other teams, this team consists of designers, developers, testers, etc… They are also self organized, knows who will do what part of the project and are responsible for their part of work. Team decides “How it needs to be built?“
3. Scrum Master: Scrum Master ensures that product owner and team, both follows the scrum effectively. This person is responsible for making sure everyone understands scrum. This person is not a manager, instead this person serves the team and the product owner for the requirements and also for removing impediments which come across the software development life cycle.

Now, as we understand these 3 roles, it’s easy to understand Scrum Process.

Scrum Process

Have a look at the above picture, This will help understand the process

How it works?

Product Owner prioritize requirements into features and create product backlog. Team chooses items from the product backlog and commits to complete them during certain amount of duration. This duration of time is generally 1 to 4 weeks and is known as Sprint. Everyday during each sprint, whole team gathers to discuss the challenges and progress. This is known as Daily Scrum Meeting.

At the end of the sprint, team delivers potentially shippable product increment, which product owner can check.

These ongoing sprint cycles results in iterative and incremental approach towards software development. 

Do you plan your project effectively?

Planning is like laying down the foundation for any project. If the foundation is strong, building will definitely be strong. There are several steps listed below that will ensure the successful planning for any project.

Please Note: I am giving these steps based on the experience I had in my past company and based on the research. These steps might change if you are using any tool or following any organization’s process.

Step #1: Project Definition
It’s very important we define the project well. All the questions should be well answered in the initial requirement gathering, like what is the purpose of the project? Who will be the end users? What is the business objective of the project? Etc. This proper project definition helps all the stake holders understand the requirements and ensures successful delivery.

Step #2: Gathering all the requirements
The second step is to gather all the requirements. If we are implementing the project using the latest project management technique like scrum, then taking the initial requirements would be enough. However, gathering most of the requirements at this stage is preferred

.

Step #3: Work breakdown or Milestone Creation
Once we have all the requirements, it’s important we perform the work breakdown. This means, we take the requirements and create the initial breakdown. Each initial breakdown will be named as a Milestone. Each milestone will have a deliverable.

Step #4: Define Timeline
Once we have the milestones created, we will have to define the timeline.

Step #5: Defining & Assigning tasks
Once we have the milestones and timeline associated. We will have to again breakdown each milestone into tasks. Creating and assigning the tasks helps responsible people assigned. Making sure a task is assigned to an individual with a proper due date ensures the successful delivery.

Keep tracking the project and hope this article helps. All the Best!

Top 10 qualities of a team player!

When we talk about team player. Is it just a person working in a team or a person effectively working in a team? Of course the second one!

What qualities do you all think, a team player should persist. Lets have a look at some of them below:

Quality #1: Use your strength

Do you know what you do best? One should be able to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Always use your strength. You might excel in communication etc... whatever your strengths are, you have something really valuable to offer to your team. 

Quality #2: Understand Objective

If you would like to be a good team player for your team, always understand the objective. Why you all are working on the project? Whats the use of it? Whats your role in the team? What is the outcome? etc... 

Quality #3: Power of Questions

Questions are always the communication starters. One must start by asking a question. This helps whole team understand the business perspective as well as helps in the whole project itself.

Quality #4: Be Reliable

This is one of the most important quality of a team player. It's not only the quality but I would say, its the professionalism one must persist. One should always deliver what they commit.

Quality #5: Effective Communication

Team always needs a person who can speak up, express their views, ask questions clearly, directly and honestly. It's again a very important quality to update and communicate the progress regularly to the team.

Quality #6: Problem-Solver

One should always take the initiative to take the ownership of the project and volunteer for solving thee problems. This makes a person definitely a better team member.

Quality #7: Share!

Common saying- "Knowledge increases by sharing". One should always share what they know. It often leads to team building approach.

Quality #8: Treat Respectfully

One should always treat team members respectfully. In a team, every team member is important and plays a significant role. It's important they are treated with respect and courtesy.

Quality #9: Exhibits Flexibility

Teams often deals with changing project conditions. Good team players always exhibits flexibility in the favor of the project success.

Quality #10: Sense of Humor

Lightness holds team members together. Relieves stress from their lives and make the environment easy to work.

How to conduct effective Business Meetings?

When we talk about business meetings, what comes in our mind? Certain number of people, meeting and discussing over a topic. 

Does it make you tired to attend a meeting? Is it just like listening to a person who is coordinating a meeting? or is it like all the people talking at the same time? 

Well, here are several points one should keep in mind when coordinating a meeting:

1. Meetings should be a productive use of time. There should always be agenda points as well as some outcome of the meeting.
2. Meetings should have proper Meeting Agenda. People should be informed about the meeting prior to the meeting along with meeting agenda so they can come prepare for it.
3. There should always be one person conducting the meeting who takes the lead. This avoids confusion and let the meeting go in a proper direction.
4. Meetings should be time-boxed. Meetings should always end in certain duration of time. This helps us maintain our schedules as well as never make a person feel tired of meetings.
5. There should always be an Outcome of the meeting. This can be like follow ups, to do list etc for each team member.

How to prepare Meeting Agendas?

1. Ask your team mates to provide you their agenda items if they have anything to be discussed. This gives each team member a chance to express their point of view and help the coordinator of the meeting to manage it well.
2. Once you have all the points, sequence them and assign timings to each agenda items. 
3. Have question/answer round at the end of the meeting.
4. Have team mates schedule next follow up meeting.

Hope these points help our meeting coordinators to conduct effective meetings.

How to write effective business emails?

There are certain points to be taken care of while writing emails to clients. Emails are the electronic medium of communication. Generally, we communicate project information, status reports etc... via emails and those have to be communicated effectively to the clients/customers for one's business needs.

Below are some of the points one should take care:

1. Using Greetings & Gestures: It is very important one should first greet the person to whom they are writing an email. Asking about one's well being provides a person a sense of importance as well as help improving relationships between the two parties.
2. To the Point: Always talk to the point whenever communicating via email. Never write long emails as nobody is interested in reading long stories. Getting to the point makes a person more interested in reading your stuff.
3. Use proper Subject: Subject is the summary of the email. This needs to clear and talking about the content of the email. Based on the subject, a person chooses to open your email from their inbox. 
4. Short & Concise: Never write long sentences, instead cut down the email in the form of numbering or bullet points and then provide status reports. This makes the email more concise and helpful for the readers.
5. Use proper Email Signatures: Using proper Email signature shows one's professionalism and good in terms of marketing one's business. A sample of Email signature is below:
• John Doe
• CEO of XYZ Company
• Email: john@xyz.com
6. Using "To" Email Address: Always use the email address to whom you are sending an email and expect response from them.
7. Using "CC" Email Address: Always use the email address from whom you don't want any response and you just want them to be aware of the matter.
8. Write different emails for different subjects: It is recommended to write different emails for different subjects in order to avoid confusion for the readers.
9. Talk about positive points first and then the negative points.
10. Talk about insight/summary and then details.