Overview

The goal of verbal presentations is to present your project in a way that will educate the other people in the room about the subject. The presentation should open up the listener to new knowledge and tell how you acquired that knowledge. Interesting stories (whittled down to their bare bones), clear photographs of the process, (short) videos of the process, and best of all physical parts or components that help tell your story, are always welcome.

One of the great basic presentation courses had some simple ideas to make a difference in the effectiveness of a presentation. Follow the four simple rules in the class "Presentation by Objectives" from Xerox Corp:

• Think about who you will be presenting to.

• How is the presentation important to them?

• What do you think the bosses want from this process?

• What would you like to get from this process?

Some Ideas for the Verbal Presentation:

There are many excellent texts on giving successful presentations. Get one or two books (or take a class like the Presentations by Objective mentioned above) to help you sharpen up the presentation. Generally, the Power Point computer program may be used to guide the effort and give the attendees something to look at. Make hand outs of the important points, and of any complex areas. Hand outs are not necessary for everything (in a Lean environment we print as little as possible).

In the wrong hands, Power Point can be extremely dull or, worse yet, annoying. If...