Effective Presentations

1. Effective Presentations How to communicate effectively with your audience ECEn 490

2. One of the key attributes of Leadership is Communications • Great ideas, poorly communicated, lack the power to motivate. • Don’t assume that everyone is as involved or knowledgeable as you. • Oral communications tend to be informative; • Written communications are usually definitive. ECEn 490

3. Effective Presentations We will discuss techniques to help you improve your group and personal communications skills in both informal design reviews and formal presentations. We will also discuss general techniques for improving all presentations. ECEn 490

4. Rules for all presentations • Tell them what you are going to tell them—introduction. • Tell them—Body of the presentation • Tell them what you told them—Summary and Conclusions. ECEn 490

5. Establish • Target • Specs • Generate • Product • Concepts • Identify • Customer • Needs • Select a • Product • Concept • Plan • Downstream • Development • Test • Product • Concept • Set • Final • Specs • Perform Economic Analysis • Benchmark Competitive Products • Build and Test Models and Prototypes • Process Review- Where are you?? • Phase 1 • Phase 2 • Phase 3 • Phase 4 • Phase 5 • Concept • Development • System-Level • Design • Detail • Design • Testing and • Refinement • Production • Ramp-up • Mission • Statement • Development • Plan • Concept Development ECEn 490

6. Design • Reviews • 1 • Proceed to • next phase • 2 • Redirect • Project • 3 • Cancel • Project • Design reviews and Checkpoint meetings. • Activities • Checkpoint • Meeting • A • B • C • E • D • Development Phase ECEn 490

7. Effective Presentations • Differences between design reviews and formal presentations. • Design reviews are informal in nature. • The objective of a design review is to show progress in selective areas of development, and to solicit inputs from knowledgeable individuals on key issues that are still being resolved. • The attendees to a design review are generally peers and first level managers who are directly involved in the project or similar projects. • This kind of meeting will not generally result in a decision, but will generate additional information that the team needs to help further the project. ECEn 490 • 7

8. Effective Presentations • Check-point meetings are more formal in nature. • The objective of a check-point meeting is to show that the team has met the requirements , with some limited set of exceptions, of a particular phase of a project and is ready to go on to the next phase. • The attendees are generally higher level managers who have budgetary or multi-project portfolio responsibility in an organization. • These meetings are expected to result in important decisions. ECEn 490 • 8

9. Effective Presentations • There are 8 steps in making an effective presentation. • 1. Identify the customer. • 2. Establish objectives for the presentation. • 3. Establish the critical body-of -facts for your project • Quickly cover the alternatives you considered on critical issues • 5. Present the team’s proposed solutions and the plans for execution of the next phase of the project. • Summary and Questions • Always capture the action items and decisions resulting from the meeting. • Have supporting documents available. ECEn 490

10. Effective Presentations • The Process of making a Presentation • 1. Identify the customer. • Who is going to be in the audience? What are their issues and concerns? • How big will the group be? With smaller groups you can be more informal, but with bigger groups you will need to have a more formal approach with more control. ECEn 490

11. Effective Presentations • 2. Establish objectives for the presentation. • What are the desired results? What action do you want from the reviewers? Remember not to have too many objectives or the meeting will wander and lose focus. • Start the presentation with a statement of expected meeting results. Remember that the outcome of this kind of meeting is a decision or set of decisions. Make sure the reviewer know what their role is in the meeting. • Try to sum up in one sentence what message you want to leave with the audience. ECEn 490

12. Effective Presentations • 3. Establish the critical body-of -facts for your project. • What information is necessary for the review team to know in order for them to make a decision? State your critical assumptions. Don’t assume that the reviewers have any in-depth knowledge of your project. This is where you make sure everyone is on the same page and has the same basic understanding of the facts surrounding your project. • For example: This is where you should review the status of completed project objectives. Compare the project results against the objectives set at the last meeting. Review the project schedule against the original plan. ECEn 490

13. Effective Presentations • Famous Quote! • “Remember, Managers have no facts, and in the absence of facts, will continue to make arbitrary and capricious decisions.” • Doug Clifford ECEn 490

14. Effective Presentations • 4. Quickly cover the alternatives you considered on critical issues. • This helps show that you have been thorough in your investigation. It also helps save valuable discussion time later in the meeting, where reviewers often ask if the team has considered their pet alternative. • What is a good method for explaining your choices? • Decision matrices!! ECEn 490

15. Effective Presentations • 5. Present the team’s proposed solutions and the plans for execution of the next phase of the project. • Show how your proposed plan meets the development objectives, customer needs and product specifications for your project. ECEn 490

16. Effective Presentations • 6. Summary and Questions. • The summary should reflect back on the meeting objectives and show how the team has met these objectives. • This is where you make the argument that the team is ready to move ahead on the project. • Always allow time for discussion and questions from the review team. It is smart to develop some sample questions before the presentation and to have prepared answers to these questions. • It is also important to highlight those areas where results have not met expectations and what actions the team is doing to correct these deficiencies. ECEn 490

17. Effective Presentations • 7. Always capture the action items and decisions resulting from the meeting. • You may not have time to go over these in detail at the end of the meeting, but you should publish this list with the appropriate ownership of all the action items as soon as possible. ECEn 490

18. Effective Presentations • Have supporting documents available. • It is wise to distribute these project control documents before the meeting so that the team can review the contents and be better prepared to contribute to the meeting. • I expect that the teams will have updated Functional Specifications Documents, a Concept Evaluation and Selection Document, and a preliminary Schedule showing team activities for the upcoming development phase. ECEn 490

19. The Mechanics of Effective Presentations Don’t write out the entire presentation. Use notes and/or key words to remind you of your thoughts and the sequence of points you are trying to make. Feel free to move around as you make the presentation. You will seem more dynamic if you move around. Avoid standing behind a podium if possible. Maintaining eye contact with the audience is essential. Don’t focus on any one individual for more than 5 seconds. Don’t speak too fast, but don’t drag it out either. ECEn 490

20. Mechanics, continued. Make liberal use of visual aids. Most presentations today are augmented with computer generated slides and/or animation. Decide on how much detail to present in the supporting material. Too much detail can drag you and the audience into a low level discussion that can take too much valuable time. Practice the presentation in front of your team. If you get too many interruptions from the audience, you will need to “take the discussion off-line” or have a “parking lot” for issues. ECEn 490

21. Homework Complete the “Concept Generation and Selection” document, due next week,. Prepare your design review for next week. Read the notes for Scheduling lecture. We will discuss scheduling your project in the next lecture. ECEn 490