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Clear Requirements Tip Sheet
Finally! Control your project budget and schedule for solution development, testing and implementation. How? With clear requirements that model the solution and build in flexibility for the project manager to handle the inevitable mid-development change requests.
Top 10 Benefits of Clear Requirements:
1. With simple document management, all project documentation has a single point of control.
2. The requirements document becomes part of the RFP, contract, and project plan.
3. Refined requirements document produces acceptance test scenarios.
4. Refined requirements document produces user training scenarios.
5. The Joint Application Development (JAD) process ensures that all stakeholders are on the same page and agree on deliverables, schedule, costs and contingencies.
6. JAD (Joint Application Development) processes ensure all stakeholders concurrence, sign-off, buy-in, and managed expectations.
7. Professional JAD facilitators ensure all stakeholders participation in defining the deliverables, reviewing prototypes, and implementing the system.
8. Models clarify deliverables processes, data, input windows, reports.
9. Models clarify development complexity, development effort, and budget.
10. Scheduled prototypes control schedule and budget, giving project managers planned change-windows.
Hell hath no fury like an assumption scorned. Make sure your solution or system assumptions are accepted by all stakeholders and align with implementation expectations and constraints. Use the professionally facilitated JAD process to ensure project success.
Now all you need is a coach to:
- Help you get started
- Demonstrate the process
- Give supportive and creative feedback to your meeting (in person or on tape)
Email: trude@diamondwrite.com
Open letter to print news media editors:
Realtors perform a necessary service for people who can't figure out how to buy or sell a house themselves, sure, but why do newspapers and magazines consistently capitalize this job category?
Lawyers and doctors perform even more necessary services, but those true professions, which require advanced degrees, are not capitalized. Yes, realtors have to take special courses in their industry -- both basic to get their "professional certification" and advanced to keep it. So do "certified" software engineers. So do communications technicians. So do electricians. No capitalization for any of them!
Perhaps I'm too sensitive to this stench, but methinks I smell a marketing ploy -- a subtle perception manipulation -- that professional Editors (ahem!) haven't noticed with their vaunted journalistic skepticism. Normally, I'd just shrug my shoulders and mutter something like "twits!" under my breath, but this issue at this time deserves more specific consideration.
We're not in a slow news cycle. We have war. We have politics. Yet the supposed decline of the housing market is being hyped beyond what it merits. We're hearing much gnashing of teeth from realtors now because their recent golden boom years are over. They're finding out that paybacks are hell. Tough!
What they did during those boom years was to (1) pump prices up beyond any realistic value of most of the properties they sold, and (2) invest their own ridiculously high commissions in "flippers." Their unbridled optimism (and greed) drove madness in many areas. Cable channels HGTV and others produced many series on how to flip real estate and how to fix up fixer-uppers in the most profitable manner. And, like fools, many of those who watched became convinced they could flip, too.
Which begat a belief in these very commercial programs as forms of education. (Wrong!) Which begat huge profits for the cable channels between revenue from product placement within the programs themselves on top of the usual ad revenue based on the large number of eyes glued to those shows. Which begat buzz. Which begat over-optimistic investment. Which begat under-regulated lending. Which begat the post-real-estate-bubble collapse of the sub-prime mortgage bubble. Which continues to beget havoc in other financial markets.
But back to the lower-case realtors ..... Now that their flips have flopped, they're flummoxed. You know what? Let them become landlords. Let them manage their overpriced property long-term.
Let them also stop convincing media editors that realtors' public relations articles are so objective and well-written that they don't need editing. For one thing, they capitalize their own name as if it's a brand label. It isn't. If it were, you'd have to put (R) or (TM) after it. You don't. And you shouldn't capitalize it either. The National Association of Realtors has, indeed, registered "Realtor" as a trademark. That's a sleazy trick, and it doesn't mean necessarily that you have to capitalize it without also putting (TM) after it to let us, the gullible public, know that the only reason you're capitalizing it is that said realtors were shrewd enough to trademark their job title. Microsoft (TM) is the trademark of a product. Gates and company didn't try to trademark "Software." The realtor is not a product. Some of them may be something less than human, but they are not products. I am amazed that their trademarking of "Realtor" hasn't been challenged legally by business editors of good sense. Should I be waiting for the National Writers Union to trademark "Writer"?
Look, I know newspaper reporters and editors are overworked and underpaid. I know that too often press releases are printed as news. [Heck, the PR pros write them that way in hopes that weary reporters and editors will print them "whole" in the urgency to meet your deadline.] Reading the paper has become one more arena where "caveat emptor" applies, and the reader cannot assume objectivity in purportedly objective "news" articles.
Tell you what, Gentle Editors -- capitalize Doctor, Lawyer, Teacher, Editor, Writer, Steelworker, and Garbage Collector, and I'll give you a pass on "Realtor." We can make the new rule "Capitalize any job that ends in -er or -or." Or none of them. As long as we're consistent. And let the Lawyers worry with the realtors' marketing tactics.
Presenter Guidelines
Preparation
Arrive early to test equipment and make sure the room is properly set up (comfortable for your audience, and with note-taking materials).
Have a backup plan ready in case equipment isnt working properly.
Bring hand-outs of your slides. The number of slides per page depends on the type of presentation and the amount of note-taking you plan for the audience.
The more note-taking, the more active their minds, the more engaged they are, and the more theyll remember.
One slide per page works well for instruction, particularly with learning activities.
Two to six slides per page works well for use as a reference, with little note-taking activity.
Presenting
Use the slides as a guide or outline to your topic, with illustrative graphics not as the full text of your speech. Do not read the slides to the audience. Quote a bullet point as necessary for emphasis of important points only.
Move around, beside the podium, never blocking the display screen from the same audience angle.
Move when you want participants to focus on you as for a discussion.
Stand still when you want participants to focus on the screen or take a moment to write.
Use a laser pointing device if possible, or on-screen pen.
Gesture to screen when you want direct participants attention there.
Use a remote device to advance the slides (right-clicking the mouse will work) or an assistant discreetly seated at the computer stand far to one side of the screen and away from you.
Organize Content
Structure your material with an introduction, progression through information, and conclusion.
Use an agenda stating key points and headers stating the topic of each slide.
The introduction should state the purpose of the session.
An overview should display core concepts only.
Keep bulleted lists parallel grammatically within the slide all starting with a verb or a noun, for example.
For a long or complex concept, display it over several simple slides rather than one with many bullets and sub-bullets.
Review and Edit
Is the material presented in a logical order?
Is a change of topic made clear with a slide stating the new topic?
Slides Guidelines
Text
Font Size:
-----28 for Title
-----4 for Content
Use a sans serif font (Verdana or Arial) for titles and brief text.
Use no more than 2 fonts per slide.
Use a common font to prevent cross-platform problems.
Avoid ALL CAPS and underlining.
Whether you use dark type on a light background, or vice versa, make sure the amount of contrast doesnt cause eye strain.
Limit each slide to one idea, or sub-concept in a series of slides on a complex concept.
Avoid complete sentences in your bullet points.
Design
Keep bells and whistles to a minimum just what keeps the audience focused on the current point or emphasizes the major point of several on a slide.
Keep transitions simple and consistent throughout the presentation.
To focus on the current point, dim the previous old points on the slide.
Place text on the left; graphics on the right.
Show data graphically, in charts clearly with clear color distinctions.
Use bullet-point text to explain the numbers in charts and tables.
Stick to a single style for each element of the design background, graphics, color scheme, animation.
Choose art carefully (logo for branding, clip art for a light touch).
Choose a template where words are easily distinguished from the background.
Avoid busy backgrounds; a monochromatic background is best.
Select a template and color scheme that makes sense with your presentation topic.
Size graphics representing statistics so they and their text labels are easily readable.
Now all you need is a coach to -
------ Help you get started
------ Guide you through the process
------ Give supportive and creative feedback at your rehearsals
Get your message across in 2 minutes or less!
The purpose of an "elevator" speech is to gain your listeners interest in the time it would take an elevator to reach the listeners floor - usually about 16 seconds - or 2 minutes at most for a chance meeting with a potential customer outside of an elevator. Working from the inside out, focus on answering "How does my listener benefit from what I offer better than anyone else?" Now, answer that question in one sentence that you can state in 30 seconds or less. That is the core message of your elevator speech
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I. Plan and organize.
------1. Identify the objective of the communication -
----------To give clear directions
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Hello, fellow writers and people with a message you need help communicating.
I am a writer and editor, experienced in both business and journalism for more than 20 years, and I'm here to help you
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