Jackie Flynt's List: Balancing Act

• The projects I recall as the most enjoyable and successful are the most challenging ones.
• While there are many things to manage during a project, when I follow these 3 principles the rest of the project tends to fall into place.
• Review meeting notes: Preparing meeting notes (or minutes) to be distributed to all active team-members is a great practice, but if team members aren’t reviewing and confirming your documentation, a critical communication opportunity is missed.
• Communicate project priorities: One of the first questions I ask a client is “Which is the most critical to determine this project’s success – the project completion date, staying within budget, or keeping to scope? While everyone knows that these 3 pieces are related, it is helpful to think about them in the context of each specific project.
• When I look back on my greatest successes, they were the result of the team coming together to find creative solutions to difficult problems.
• By fostering an environment with open communication you’ll find yourself developing meaningful connections with team members, colleagues and clients.

4 more annotations...

• Microsoft PowerPoint, usually just called PowerPoint, is a proprietary commercial presentation program developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Office suite, and runs on Microsoft Windows and Apple's Mac OS X operating system. The current versions are Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2010 for Windows and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
• PowerPoint presentations consist of a number of individual pages or "slides". The "slide" analogy is a reference to the slide projector. Slides may contain text, graphics, sound, movies, and other objects, which may be arranged freely.

• phic is a visual representation of your information that you can quickly and easily create, choosing from among many different layouts, to effectively communicate your message or ideas
• you can create SmartArt graphics in Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, and Microsoft Office Word 2007 too.
• Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
• (theme: A set of unified design elements that provides a look for your document by using color, fonts, and graphics.), you can create designer-quality illustrations with only a few clicks of your mouse.
• Creating designer-quality illustrations can be challenging, especially if you are not a professional designer or you cannot afford to hire a professional designer.
• With

  the new 2007 Office release feature called SmartArt graphics,

• Because Office PowerPoint 2007 presentations often contain slides with bulleted lists, you can quickly convert slide text to a SmartArt graphic. In addition, you can add animation to your SmartArt graphic in Office PowerPoint 2007 presentations.

   

  When you create a SmartArt graphic, you are prompted to choose a type of SmartArt graphic, such as Process, Hierarchy, Cycle, or Relationship. A type is similar to a category of SmartArt graphic, and each type contains several different layouts. After you choose a layout, it is easy to change the layout for your SmartArt graphic. Most of your text and other content, colors, styles, effects, and text formatting are automatically carried over to the new layout.
• Before you create your SmartArt graphic, visualize what type and layout are best for displaying your data.
• consider the amount of text that you have, because the amount of text often determines the layout that you use and how many shapes you need in the layout. In general, SmartArt graphics are most effective when the number of shapes and the amount of text are limited to key points. Larger amounts of text can distract from the visual appeal of your SmartArt graphic and make it harder to convey your message visually.

7 more annotations...

• SmartArt, found under the Insert tab in the ribbon in PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and Outlook, is a new group of editable and formatted diagrams. There are 115 preset SmartArt graphics layout templates in categories such as list, process, cycle, and hierarchy. When an instance of a SmartArt is inserted, a Text Pane appears next to it to guide the user through entering text in the hierarchical levels. Each SmartArt graphic, based on its design, maps the text outline, automatically resized for best fit, onto the graphic. There are a number of "quick styles" for each graphic that apply largely different 3D effects to the graphic, and the graphic's shapes and text can be formatted through shape styles and WordArt styles. In addition, SmartArt graphics change their colors, fonts, and effects to match the document's theme.