Chapter 82. What Do They Want to Hear, Anyway?
PROJECT COMMUNICATION TAKES MANY FORMS—from "management by walking around" to formal presentations. I consider communication the most critical set of activities in a project.
The hardest, yet the most common, way to convey software project information from one person to the next is a formal presentation. Some polls find that public speaking is more frightening than death or the dentist!
Most presentations are too long, boring, and riddled with too much detail. Look at your last presentation and see if it could accurately be described as "death by PowerPoint®."
If your answer is "yes," you can redesign your next one so it truly communicates to your audience. Ask yourself, "What is the best mode of presentation for what I want to accomplish?" If you have a small group and want give-and-take discussions, using a flip chart or a whiteboard to capture areas of concern or agreement is a useful technique.
However, if you want executives to approve a particular project or agree to a new project tact, a multimedia slideshow could work. The trick is to realize that regardless of the technology you employ, you are what sells the idea to your audience—not your slides, posters, or laser light shows.
We must engage both left-brain logic and right-brain creativity in order to effectively sell our ideas. Use the statistical proof, but ...
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