Project Management 101.1

Project Management Process is suffering from endless Scope Creep. Project Management Professional (PMP) is a credential offered by the Project Management Institute (PMI). The credential is obtained by documenting 3 or 5 years work experience in project management, completing 35 hours of project management related training, and scoring a certain percentage of questions on a written, multiple choice examination.

In the 3ed edition of the PMBOK Guide (the PMI Bible) it doubled in size over the 2nd edition. Most video's on this topic were either sales pitches to sell training courses or poor quality video's not worth listening too. Here is the best of what I've found todate.







Blue Sky Project Management...The PMBOK is DEAD, well atleast from this mans point of view. He makes an excellent point...Traditional PM has become to complex...to bureaucratic. Blue Sky PM simplifies the process and focuses on first to market.

SCRUM PM -Basic Terms

Scrum is an iterative incremental framework for managing complex work (such as new product development) commonly used with agile software development. Although the word is not an acronym, some companies implementing the process have been known to spell it with capital letters as SCRUM. This may be due to one of Ken Schwaber’s early papers, which capitalized SCRUM in the title.

Although Scrum was intended for management of software development projects, it can be used to run software maintenance teams, or as a general project/program management approach.



Scrum is a “process skeleton,” which contains sets of practices and predefined roles. The main roles in Scrum are:

the “ScrumMaster”, who maintains the processes (typically in lieu of a project manager); the “Product Owner”, who represents the stakeholders; the “Team”, a cross-functional group of about 7 people who do the actual analysis, design, implementation, testing, etc. During each “sprint”, typically a two to four week period (with the length being decided by the team), the team creates a potentially shippable product increment (for example, working and tested software). The set of features that go into a sprint come from the product “backlog,” which is a prioritized set of high level requirements of work to be done. Which backlog items go into the sprint is determined during the sprint planning meeting. During this meeting, the Product Owner informs the team of the items in the product backlog that he or she wants completed. The team then determines how much of this they can commit to complete during the next sprint. During a sprint, no one is allowed to change the sprint backlog, which means that the requirements are frozen for that sprint. After a sprint is completed, the team demonstrates the use of the software.

Scrum enables the creation of self-organizing teams by encouraging co-location of all team members, and verbal communication across all team members and disciplines that are involved in the project.

A key principle of Scrum is its recognition that during a project the customers can change their minds about what they want and need (often called requirements churn), and that unpredicted challenges cannot be easily addressed in a traditional predictive or planned manner. As such, Scrum adopts an empirical approach—accepting that the problem cannot be fully understood or defined, focusing instead on maximizing the team’s ability to deliver quickly and respond to emerging requirements.

There are several implementations of systems for managing the Scrum process, which range from yellow stickers and whiteboards, to software packages. One of Scrum’s biggest advantages is that it is very easy to learn and requires little effort to start using.



Ken Schwaber (below) co-developed the Agile process, Scrum. He is a founder of the Agile Alliance and Scrum Alliance, and signatory to the Agile Manifesto. Ken has been a software developer for over thirty years. He is an active advocate and evangelist for Agile processes.



In 1986, Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka described a new holistic approach that increases speed and flexibility in commercial new product development. They compare this new holistic approach, in which the phases strongly overlap and the whole process is performed by one cross-functional team across the different phases, to rugby, where the whole team “tries to go to the distance as a unit, passing the ball back and forth”. The case studies come from the automotive, photo machine, computer and printer industries.

In 1991, DeGrace and Stahl, in Wicked Problems, Righteous Solutions, referred to this approach as Scrum, a rugby term mentioned in the article by Takeuchi and Nonaka. In the early 1990s, Ken Schwaber used an approach that led to Scrum at his company, Advanced Development Methods. At the same time, Jeff Sutherland, John Scumniotales, and Jeff McKenna developed a similar approach at Easel Corporation and were the first to call it Scrum. In 1995 Sutherland and Schwaber jointly presented a paper describing Scrum at OOPSLA ’95 in Austin, TX, its first public appearance. Schwaber and Sutherland collaborated during the following years to merge the above writings, their experiences, and industry best practices into what is now known as Scrum. In 2001, Schwaber teamed up with Mike Beedle to describe the method in the book Agile Software Development with Scrum.

Project Management -Basic Terms 101

Web 2.0 - Basic Terms 101

Email - Business English 201

Businesses are always striving to be more Efficient and Effective. Individuals need to strive to be more efficient and effective in our business email communications too. Here are educational videos from Business English Pod Ltd.

Strategic Objectives Setting 101

Categories of Objectives
In addressing strategic planning's second key question, "Where do we wish to arrive, and when?," your management team will develop a set of quantified Objectives. And when developing objectives for your organization, you've got six categories to consider:

1. Financial
2. Marketing/Sales
3. Products/Services
4. Operations
5. Human Resources
6. Community

Within each of these six categories, you can select from a number of specific measurements for each objective. For example, you can set your financial objective to measure profitability. Like gross profit; or operating profit; or net profit, either before or after tax. Or you can write your financial objective in terms of return on assets, return on investment, or cash on hand.

You might write your marketing or sales objective in terms of sales volume, sales growth rate, or market share – and your product and service objective as quality of products and services, new products and services introduced, or customer satisfaction. And your operational objective might measure efficiency, productivity or cost reduction.

Your objective dealing with human resources – the people side of the business – can measure employee benefits, employee satisfaction, employee training or employee turnover. Finally, your social objective – your non-economic or community-related objective – might deal with non-pollution of air and water; equal opportunity employment; being a good corporate citizen.

Prioritizing Your Objectives

The order in which we've listed the categories of objectives is not arbitrary. This order – beginning with financial and ending with community – is referred to as the "Hierarchy of Objectives."

It's the order in which senior managers generally prioritize their objectives. When you arrive at the step in the planning process where you're ready to set your objectives, the first suggestion you'll likely hear is "Let's make a profit." Even the not-for-profit institutions – governmental, educational, charitable – jump to develop their financial objective first. Like their for-profit cousins, they too have financial needs and constraints. And their financial needs are first on the minds of management when setting objectives

And if the financial objective is so important, how can management attain that objective? In the jargon of for-profit firms, "How can we make a buck?"

The way you do it is you sell something to somebody. Simple as that. All businesses must exchange a product or a service for money. And since its selling something that produces a profit, the marketing or sales objective must support the financial objective.

And what is it you're going to sell to somebody? You need a product or service, don't you? So now the product or service objective supports the marketing/sales objective. Just as the marketing/sales objective supports the financial objective. Do you see how we're working our way down the hierarchy?

Operationally, you have to build your product or deliver your service. And it takes people to run the operation. And so you evolve the "Hierarchy."



Balance Your Objectives

Be careful though. Don't take the hierarchy too seriously. Don’t assign too much weight to the categories nearest the top of the list. Avoid ending up with all of your objectives in the top two categories – finance and marketing.

For if you do, you'll have a problem. Here's why. Employees outside of the executive planning group care a whole lot more about the categories in the middle and bottom of the list than they do those near the top. That's simply a fact of life. After you get a level or so down from the top of your organization, you find a lot less interest in the financial and marketing objectives, and a lot more interest in operations and in people. So if your objectives focus on profit and sales only, your employees will wonder, "What's in it for me?" If they ask that question out loud, you've got a problem. If they ask it silently to themselves, you've got an even more serious problem.

And don't forget – to successfully accomplish your objectives, you'll need the help of all the people in your organization. So balance your objective list. Consider including objectives in each of the six categories. Not that you must necessarily have an objective in each category. But at least consider each. Try to develop a balanced list of objectives. So you'll gain the commitment of employees who might otherwise ask, "What's in it for me?"

If you'll benefit from developing more than one objective in a particular category – do it. For example, you may write an objective for total sales; another for sales of a particular product line; or sales to a specific market segment.

Limit Your Objectives

But again, caution. Be careful not to set too many objectives. If you do, you'll lose focus. You won't be able to use your objectives in managing day-to-day. Consider this – If you can't memorize your objectives, you've probably got too many. For the memories of most of us, that's about six.

Some years ago, I worked with a high-tech manufacturing client in Los Angeles. On the second day of that company's planning retreat, the executive management team developed its list of objectives. I opened the objective setting session with a brief discussion on the categories of objectives, spoke for a few moments on the criteria of objectives, and asked for suggestions on the first objective we might consider.

After a lengthy discussion, the group agreed on a financial objective – pre-tax profit. From there, they moved ahead nicely, developed four or five well-quantified, challenging (yet achievable) objectives. So far, so good. But they kept going. There were another three or four suggested objectives still "alive." I stood up and gave my first little "mini-speech" about the hazards of setting too many objectives.

Just the same, the group continued developing objectives. When they completed writing their eighth objective, I delivered my second mini-speech. My third warning came between their tenth and eleventh.

In all, the group set thirteen objectives. About twice the number they should have. Knowing they couldn't possibly focus on all thirteen, I then had the group prioritize their objectives.

And I'm glad I did. Because within six months, the company's managers had abandoned their "C" priority objectives. They were working on all of the "A" and a couple of the "B" objectives. But they had spent nearly six months scrambling in an unfocused attempt to accomplish all thirteen. Efficient use of resources? Hardly.

Keep your objective lists short.

Criteria for Objectives

For an objective to be useful, it has to meet certain criteria. First, it must carry a single theme. It should tell you to do one thing only, not two or more. Example: If you decided to increase sales by 15% next year, you might write an objective that said exactly that.

But let's imagine you'd also like to increase net profit by 1%. Couldn't you write one objective that said "do both." Let's suppose you do. Suppose you write an objective that said, "We will increase sales by 15% next year and, at the same time, improve net profit by 1%." If by the end of the year you achieved the 15% increase in sales but missed the 1% increase in profit, have you made or missed the objective? You could argue it either way. At best, it's ambiguous.

Worse however, is that the objective does not provide you with guidance in operating your business. Here's why ... Imagine that six months after you write your objective calling for 15% increase in sales and 1% increase in net profit, your sales manager comes running in with the "golden opportunity of the month."

"Here's the deal," he says. "We have a grand opportunity to land a really sizable order. And if we get it, this order should be enough to put us over the top – to give us the 15% increase in sales we're shooting for." "Oh yeah," continues your sales manager. "There's some bad news. Since the market is so fiercely competitive, and since our competitors know about this large potential order, we're really going to have to sharpen our pencils to land the order. We'll have to shave our price just as far as we can."

So while the "golden opportunity" will go a long way toward achieving the 15% increase in sales volume, it will actually detract from the 1% increase in profit. Should you go after the big order, or not? Notice that your objective statement hasn't provided you any guidance in this decision. Why? Because in the same statement, you've bundled together the sales revenue increase and the profitability increase. The objective leaves you to debate which of the two (sales or profit) is the more important.

Wouldn't it be better to pull the objective statement apart? To have one statement that addresses the increase in sales revenue; another, the increase in profit. And then be sure to do one more thing – give a different priority to each of the two potentially conflicting objectives. During your planning sessions, you can argue all you like about whether sales volume or profit is more important. But when your sales manager appears with his "golden opportunity," you'll know how to respond.

Eliminate "Why" and "How"

In writing objectives, you should eliminate the "why" and the "how." If you need to discuss "why" you're interested in increasing sales by 15% next year, you'll have that conversation during your planning sessions. You won't explain "why" in your objective statement, and you won't attempt to justify your objective to those who read your plan.

Neither will you describe "how" you'll accomplish the objective. At least not at this point in the process. You won't write an objective that says, "We'll increase sales volume by 15% next year by implementing the following three programs...." The answer to "how" is really a strategy. You'll develop your strategies during the next step in the planning process.

You should establish results-oriented objectives whenever possible. There are two kinds of objectives you can develop – results-oriented and activities-oriented. Results-oriented objectives are stronger. Use them.

Example: "We will increase dollar sales by 15% next year." That's a results-oriented objective. "We will increase the number of sales calls by 15% next year." That's an activities- oriented objective. Obviously, the first is a stronger statement. Whenever possible, write your objectives in terms of a result, rather than an activity.

There are times when you simply can't write a results-oriented objective, and if so, write your objective as an activity. But these are the exceptions. "Install the new computer system by the end of the year," "Hire a manager of human resources by June 15th," "Launch the new product by the third quarter." Each is an activity-oriented objective. Each is used because no result (other than the completion of the activity) can be measured. Each, however, is an exception. Generally, your objectives should be results-oriented.

Quantify Your Objectives

Objectives must be quantified. When your objective is due for accomplishment, you've got to be able to measure it to figure out whether or not you've succeeded. More importantly, everyone in your organization has to know how hard to "push to go get it."

Sometimes quantifying an objective is easy. Sometimes it's not. It all depends on the category of the objective. Financial objectives are the easiest to quantify. After all, the world of finance is a number on a piece of paper. And marketing objectives are usually easy also. Certainly you can quantify sales volume. And market share too, if you can agree on a measurement for industry sales.

But how about something like customer satisfaction? A pretty gray area isn't it? Some say customer satisfaction is so difficult to quantify, that you can't do it. Or can you?

Sure you can! You can count complaints. You can measure defective product. You can count referrals to new accounts. Or repeat business. Or warranty costs. In every case – in all of these suggested ways to measure customer satisfaction – You've taken the same approach. You've decided that customer satisfaction is so difficult to measure directly, that you'll measure something else. Something which you believe parallels customer satisfaction. In effect, you’ll measure customer satisfaction indirectly.

So when warranty cost gets below 1.5%; or when the reorder ratio goes over 75%; or when referrals to new accounts reaches 25% of total billings – then you'll believe that customer satisfaction is where you want it to be. The point is, you quantify your objectives even if you have to "force" your measurement.

Managers often attempt to use market share as a measurable objective. But we discourage their doing so. here's why...

It's difficult to get agreement on the total market size used in calculating market share. And even if you could agree on total market size, data on market size is never available right now. This lack of timely information means you can't use a market share objective to manage your business day-to-day. For these reasons, market share is most often viewed as an approximate, rather than an exact measurement. It makes for a poor objective.

But suppose market share is important to your organization, as it is to many. If so, you can write your objective in terms of sales volume. Then you can estimate total market size, and put that estimate in your list of "planning assumptions." Finally, in an appendix to your plan, you can divide your sales objective by your estimated market size to arrive at your intended market share. That way, you'll have an objective (sales volume), whose measurement is familiar to, and accepted by, those who must accomplish it. And just as important, it's a measurement that's available right now. So you can use it as a day-to-day tool in managing your business.

Keep Your Objectives "in Concert"

Objectives should be "in concert." It's one thing to write down an objective and say "Yes, that's fine. I think we can do it. Let's commit to it." Then go on to the next objective and do it again. And again. It's one thing to take each objective one at a time. And it's quite another to write all of your objectives on a piece of paper, tack them up at the front of the room, take a long hard look at them, and ask, "Can we do this whole bunch of objectives all at the same time?"

Example: Let's imagine your industry is enjoying very fast growth. During your objective setting session, you decide, because you're in a fast-growth industry, to set an objective that says "We will build sales revenue by 35% next year." O.K., you write it down, and you've got your first objective.

A bit later, you remember that cash was tight last year. "Recall that in April we had trouble meeting payroll. Why don't we set an objective that deals with our cash position? Let's set an objective that says, 'During next year, we'll have, on average, 30% more cash in the bank than we had last year.'"

See what you've done? You wrote a set of objectives calling for growing by 35% in one year and, at the same time, having more cash laying around. But the two are conflicting objectives, aren't they? Because growth doesn't produce cash. To grow fast, you'll use cash to fuel your way up the growth curve.

My point is obvious – look at your objectives all together to make sure they're in concert. If not, make a choice. Choose among conflicting objectives. Cross out one or the other. Or modify one or the other. Either way. So when you're all finished writing your list of objectives, everyone on your planning team believes you can accomplish them all at the same time.

Both Challenging and Attainable

Finally, an objective – any objective – should be challenging and, at the same time, attainable. People in your organization should understand that accomplishment of the objective requires that they "reach." But given that reach, they should expect they can accomplish the objective. That the objective is achievable.

The analogy I like is that of the basketball hoop. The hoop is ten feet above the floor of the gymnasium. At that ten foot level, the game is both challenging and also attainable. If the hoop were four feet above the floor of the gymnasium, it wouldn’t be challenging. Your players wouldn’t work too hard at playing the game. If it were thirty feet above the floor of the gymnasium, it wouldn’t be attainable. Again, your players wouldn’t too hard at playing the game.

It's your job, as a manager, to keep your players working hard at playing the game. You‘ll need to find that "ten foot level" for each objective. So that each of your objectives is both challenging and, at the same time, attainable.


Article adapted from Bill Birnbaum's new book, Strategic Thinking: A Four Piece Puzzle

S.M.A.R.T. Business Goals 101

When seeking to improve your business or life you need to set and make plans to achieve goals. And the best blue print process is called, SMART Goal planning. I encourage you to pick up a pen and a piece of paper (or your favorite word processor and PC) and jot down the goals you want to reach for your self or business just for practice. S.M.A.R.T. stands for:

S = Specific
M = Measurable
A = Attainable
R = Realistic
T = Timely

Specific
Goals should be straightforward and emphasize what you want to happen. Specifics help us to focus our efforts and clearly define what we are going to do.

Specific is the What, Why, and How of the SMART model.

WHAT are you going to do? Use action words such as direct, organize, coordinate, lead, develop, plan, build etc.

WHY is this important to do at this time? What do you want to ultimately accomplish?

HOW are you going to do it? (By...)

Ensure the goals you set is very specific, clear and easy. Instead of setting a goal to lose weight or be healthier, set a specific goal to lose 2cm off your waistline or to walk 5 miles at an aerobically challenging pace.

Measurable
If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. In the broadest sense, the whole goal statement is a measure for the project; if the goal is accomplished, the is a success. However, there are usually several short-term or small measurements that can be built into the goal.

Choose a goal with measurable progress, so you can see the change occur. How will you see when you reach your goal? Be specific! "I want to read 3 chapter books of 100 pages on my own before my birthday" shows the specific target to be measure. "I want to be a good reader" is not as measurable.

Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal you set. When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continued effort required to reach your goals.

Attainable
When you identify goals that are most important to you, you begin to figure out ways you can make them come true. You develop that attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity to reach them. Your begin seeing previously overlooked opportunities to bring yourself closer to the achievement of your goals.

Goals you set which are too far out of your reach, you probably won't commit to doing. Although you may start with the best of intentions, the knowledge that it's too much for you means your subconscious will keep reminding you of this fact and will stop you from even giving it your best.

A goal needs to stretch you slightly so you feel you can do it and it will need a real commitment from you. For instance, if you aim to lose 20lbs in one week, we all know that isn't achievable. But setting a goal to loose 1lb and when you've achieved that, aiming to lose a further 1lb, will keep it achievable for you.

The feeling of success which this brings helps you to remain motivated.



Realistic
This is not a synonym for "easy." Realistic, in this case, means "do-able." It means that the learning curve is not a vertical slope; that the skills needed to do the work are available; that the project fits with the overall strategy and goals of the organization. A realistic project may push the skills and knowledge of the people working on it but it shouldn't break them.

Devise a plan or a way of getting there which makes the goal realistic. The goal needs to be realistic for you and where you are at the moment. A goal of never again eating sweets, cakes, crisps and chocolate may not be realistic for someone who really enjoys these foods.

For instance, it may be more realistic to set a goal of eating a piece of fruit each day instead of one sweet item. You can then choose to work towards reducing the amount of sweet products gradually as and when this feels realistic for you.

Be sure to set goals that you can attain with some effort! Too difficult and you set the stage for failure, but too low sends the message that you aren't very capable. Set the bar high enough for a satisfying achievement!

Timely
Set a timeframe for the goal: for next week, in three months, by fifth grade. Putting an end point on your goal gives you a clear target to work towards.

If you don't set a time, the commitment is too vague. It tends not to happen because you feel you can start at any time. Without a time limit, there's no urgency to start taking action now.

Time must be measurable, attainable and realistic.

Everyone will benefit from goals and objectives if they are SMART. SMART, is the instrument to apply in setting your goals and objectives.

Strategic Business Planning - SWOT 101

Having worked in the capacity of a Strategic Planning Manager for a fortune 500 company this section on Strategic Business Planning is near and dear to my heart.

SWOT is an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

It is the culmination of much internal analysis and external research. Thinking about the outcome, one can define SWOT analysis as the extent to which a firm’s current strategy, strengths and weaknesses are relevant to the business environment that the company is operating in.

SWOT analysis is an important tool for auditing the overall strategic position of a business and its environment. Once key strategic issues have been identified, they feed into business objectives, particularly marketing objectives.

SWOT analysis is often presented in a 2x2 matrix form:

Strengths and weaknesses are internal aspects and Kotler (1988) suggests that these should cover the four areas of marketing, financial, manufacturing and organisational.

Opportunities and threats look at the main environmental issues such as the economic situation, social changes such as the population getting older and technological developments including the internet.



A SWOT can be performed for companies, departments and divisions as well as individual people. Whatever the focus is the results will be very individual, even to companies competing in the same sector. One company may see new technology increasing the number of consumers who wish to buy online as an opportunity for ecommerce yet another player in the market, without any in-house internet expertise, may see this as a threat.

The importance of SWOT analysis lies in its ability to help clarify and summaries the key issues and opportunities facing a business. Value lies in considering the implications of the things identified and it can therefore play a key role in helping a business to set objectives and develop new strategies. The ideal outcome would be to maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses in order to take advantage of external opportunities and overcome the threats. For example, the environment may present an opportunity for a new product but if the company does not have the capacity to produce that product it may either decide to invest in new plant and machinery or to just steer clear.



The biggest advantages of SWOT analysis are that it is simple and only costs time to do. It can help generate new ideas as to how a company can use a particular strength to defend against threats in the market. If a company is aware of the potential threats then it can have responses and plans ready to counteract them when they happen.

There are also disadvantages of SWOT analysis. A typical SWOT analysis is a usually a simple list and not critically presented. If a company is thinking about compiling lists it may not be focused sufficiently on how to achieve its objectives. Taking a list approach can also result in items not being prioritized. For example, a long list of weaknesses may appear to be ‘cancelled out’ by a longer list of strengths, regardless of how significant those weaknesses are.

A SWOT analysis is a strategic tool but it is generally not used in a formal way. However there are now several pieces of SWOT analysis software available to help formalize the process and give the analysis structure. This software can help companies brainstorm and create a SWOT analysis and then present it as a report or presentation.

The best SWOT analysis will be more than a simple checklist. It will consider the degree of strength and weakness versus its competitors to determine how good that strength really is. A company may have a strong research and development team but a competitor’s could be even stronger. A good SWOT should also look the size of an opportunity or threat and show how these inter-relate with its strengths and weaknesses

Memorizing Vs. Notes in Public Speaking

Interesting point about perfect vs. approachable.

Managing Time in Public Speaking

Fantastic advice.

Pauses in a Public Speech

Simple example of how three different pauses can have different effects.

Voice in Public Speaking

Voice is important. But no need to be a drama queen or king. Be yourself. But you must work to be interesting not boring. Yes, this can be a major challenge as some people just seem born with a great sense of facial animation and excitement. Still, even a calm and reserve individual can become an outstanding public speaker with just minor adjustments to voice energy and modulation.

Openers in Public Speaking

Energy is important. Capturing attention in the first 20 seconds is critical. Even a room full of CPAs can fall asleep if a fellow CPA explaining the micro details of FASB 157 changes has no energy.

How to Close a Public Speech

Lots of talented people in the world like this young man to learn from. Naturally every event and profession may call for a different approach. But the advice given here is timeless and universal. Just be sure to incorporate this advice into your own personality.

Memorable Public Speech - Tips

This young man gives excellent advice with specific examples

Presentation Master of the Digital Age

Steve Jobs was never a geek wizard like his co-founder partner The Woz. Steve was always the visionary who knew what the world needed before the world knew. He most certainly was an over demanding micro manager who expected nothing less than perfection. The same was true of the founder of McDonalds and Nike. Name me one great corporate leader or manager who build a business from scratch? But this is not a section on management style. This is the business presentation training section.

Steve jobs has a long history of being the inspirational leader of Apple. No doubt he is the master of the digital age presentations that can span the global and build bridges between generations of digital users.

Below is Steve, introducing the iPod. Listen to how he delivers the business case for iPod. Notice how he uses the big screen presentation. It augments his presentation with powerful visualization aids but Steve never uses slides as note cards to read. He does have a bad habit of pacing and removing his eye focus from the audience to much. But hay, this is Steve Jobs.



College and Professional public speaking training is always worth the time. But you can get free training simply by listening to powerful communicators and analyzing what made the presentation powerful to you. Below listen to Steve Jobs in 1983 provide inspiration to developers,workers and the news media.

How Not To Make A PowerPoint Presentation

This guy is fantastic. This should be required PowerPoint training.

Presentations to Venture Capitalist

Let me share with you this video from VC Guy Kawasaki who wrote The Art of The Start.

Guy came up with his 10-20-30 Presentation Rule (below) to help young people pitch their ideas to VCs. This 10-20-30 rule is also a great general rule of thumb for any presentation ( natural details and style should vary with your profession and audience).

Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA

Finance 107 - Project Cash Out vs Cash In

Using the time value of money to determine net present value (NPV) or cost justification for a expendenture.

Finance 106 -Discounted Cash Flows (DCF)

Net Present Value (NPV) and DCF are the two workhorse tools of the business financial analyst. They are most often used to make investment decisions in capital equipment and projects.

Finance 105 - More PV / FV

More from Professor Sal

Finance 104 -Money Choices Using PV / FV

More education from Professor Sal

Salman Khan (Sal) founded the Khan Academy with the hope of using technology to foster new learning models. He is currently working at a hedge fund based in Menlo Park, CA. Prior to this, Sal was one of the initial employees at MVC Venture Capital.

Finance 103 - Money Today vs Money Later

Another great educational video on Present Value -one of the most important concepts of finance. The time value of money taught by Sal founder of the Kahn Academy.

Finance 102 -Present & Future Value

The man behind the video is Dr. C. Dr. C is a MBA from Univ. Southern California and PhD from Claremont Graduate School. Dr. C is a college professor.

Finance 101 - Time Value of Money

The time value of money concept in finance is the foundation of what you need to know to answer questions about money. Questions like these: Whats the future value of your money worth? Whats the present value of your monthly lottery winnings payout worth? How much do you need to save monthly to have one million saved for your retirement?

TeachMeFinance.com

Bond Yield Terms -301

Here is a great overview of bond yield terms and calculations.

Bond Terms & Valuations -201

Your one stop-shop for excellent precise and concise...Bond Education.

TeachMeFinance.com

Accounting 107 -Financial Statments

Accounting 106 - Expanded Equation

Accounting with Susan Crosson

Accounting 105 - Equity

Susan Crosson discusses the basics of Stockholder Equity vs. Owner Equity along with Retain Earnings and other Equity Accounts. Always remember this basic Accounting Equation [ Assets - Liabilities = Equity ].

Accounting 104 -Liabilities

Liabilities on the balance sheet. Liabilities are debts payable -bills owed. Unearned revenue means the customer has paid in advance. Susan says, "Liabilities end in payable or start in unearned."

Accounting 103 -Assets

The concept of assets on a balance sheet explained by Susan Crosson

Accounting 100 -The Basics

My Accounting Professor's were all CPA's and Ph.D.'s but I'd had more fun with these teachers. It's hard to get excited about accounting debits and credits just like computer zeros and ones. But a creative person can add some fun. Debit=Left...Credit=Right...cha..cha..cha.

In my Accounting College the Debits were closes to the windows (left) and the Credits were closes to the door (right). And we liked credits the best because they were closes to the door which was the way out of accounting class.

This dual Accounting and Finance major wanted to hang out with the Business School Retail Fashion and Marketing Majors -more fun....more females.

Accounting 102 -The Accounting Equation

It's not quantum physics. It's Assets-Liabilities=Shareholder Equity

If you like this then you'll love this Financial Education

Accounting 101 - Measuring Profit/Loss

This will provide you with the fundamentals of learning the accounting cycle for measuring a businesses income or losses. Eager Beaver Students may go to Window To Wall Streets new Free Financial Education Section and Wikipedia Income Statements for lots more financial education.