PPT… the powerful point

I always considered PPT as a tool.  It is so powerful that we ask people to do power point by which we mean they should make presentation. Tool became the verb!.  I have mastered the art of ppt and was adept in using its several features like animations, motion paths, hyperlinks, inserting control/navigational buttons etc and finally found out that a black board (now a days everything is white) and a piece of chalk (read white board marker pen) is the most powerful tool to express yourself.  Once, I went to deliver a guest lecture in a small time management school.  When my office asked me to do that job I prepared a very elaborate and technically superior ppt so as to impress the students thinking that they being management students will give me accolades.  When I went there, I learnt that they do not have the projector and still operating the overhead projector for projecting the transparencies!  I almost collapsed out of surprise for their respect for tradition (if old things can be dubbed so) and disappointment for not able to entice the students with my PPTability.  Poor course coordinator offered to convert my ppt into transparencies which I declined out of vengeance and frustration.  I went on with green board (neither black nor white … something like intermediate technology). 

I remembered all this yesterday when I read article  by Ravi Subramanian in ET (13 Sept 2010) titled:

Death By PowerPoint: Beware of a presentation-dominated culture. 

I cannot agree more with the author and he echoed some of the feelings I often expressed to my colleagues.  I my office I have seen people copasting (copy pasting) long passages in a single slide with letters that appear smaller than ants to a person with 100/6 vision sitting 6 ft away. Their duty is to make ppt and not to communicate.  Tool is mistaken for the message. Similarly, scores of slides packed for a 15 minutes slot.  When I chaired a session in a conference last year, I found it really difficult and painful to ration time to people who came with unending ppt for 10 minutes slot.  And each slide packs volumes of information cluttered around. Ideally one should have minimum number of slides with each slide carrying a few lines or still better a few communicative drawings/pictures.  If presenting in a conference/seminar, better to highlight results in first 3 - 4 slides and keep the latter slides for explaining the methods, etc. and keep a few reserve slides for answering possible supplementaries.  Ultimately, our motto should not be communication or no communication, ppt zindabad.  But, ppt or no ppt, I should communicate effectively.  This reminds me of my teacher Shri Nagabhushanam who taught Botany  in our 9th standard in High School at Ichchhapuram. He explained us the cross section of a leaf without getting up from his chair and we all could visualise how the CS looked without seeing any diagram/picture. 

The strength of your project lies not in the ppt, but in its content. I recently heard that the shortest ppt a person presented in  a seminar has only a single slide! Wow!

study report on rural industrialisation project

 

Here is a study report on evaluation of district rural industrialisation project.

Feel free to give ur feedback.

Satyasai

 

Technorati Tags: project evaluation

Modified internal rate of return

Hello friends. Meeting you all after a long time. You are all aware of the concept of Internal Rate of Return (IRR). It is return in percentage from investment. Or return from Rs 100 of investment. Though very popular due to ease in interpretation, it has certain limitations due to the restrictive reinvestment assumption. That is, the IRR assumes that the ivestment gives the return when the annual returns are reinvested o fetch returns @ IRR. Hence, Modified IRR concept was suggested in literature. An excel function also is available to compute it. However, the MIRR was hardly applied in Indian siutuations. In the following paper, I applied the method to watershed data. I also demonstrated the method suggested by Cary and Dunn (1997) to adjust MIRR for scale and time span differences across projects we compare.

Application of Modified Internal Rate of Return Method for Watershed Evaluation

K.J.S.Satyasai

Frankly the attempt is direct adoption of known method and I did not make any original contribution. Please read and give your comments.

Thank u all

satyasai

Reverse Murphy Law & Long blog(hol)iday

I am thankful to the visitors of this blog of mine. I feel guilty that I did not post any new topics thesedays - I enjoyed a long blog holiday- especially when I see the site meter stats which show that people are regulary visiting this blog - at least 5-6 on any day. Perhaps people are visiting to see any updates - I feel awckward for disappointing them. Of course the holiday is only for this and not to my telugu blog, notwithstanding the intermittant gaps there too.
One reason for the gap in this blog is the very fact that i did not come across with any material that I can post here. It is because I am not reading anything on these topics thesdays . .. :))).

Reverse Murphy Law or Satyasai' Law :))

In the previous post I wrote about Murphy's Law. Recently I experienced reverse of it. In nutshell, Murphy's Law says that when things can go wrong they go wrong. We experienced that Things, even when left to go wrong, may still go right.' The incident that prompted me to is like this.

My daughter did a project for her school as part of a team. On the day of the exhibition, she was not to go to school as she was not in the core team which need to explain the things to visitors. Her friend's status is the same. But both of them needed to send the charts prepared by them individually to school on the exhibition day so that the core team can arrange and open for public view. My daughter was to send the chart through my son who is in the same school and whose attendance was compulsory. When the friend called my daughter about the arrangements to send the charts to the core team, my daughter asked her to send it across to my son and never bothered to enquire about the person through who she would send and in which school bus she commutes.

Next day my son developed fever and could not attend the school. Not knowing the arrangements we did not wake up my daughter too. My dauhter got up started panicking as to what to do. I volunteered to take her to school. We went to school clueless as to where to search for who. My son's classmates we met at the venue of the exhibition were clue less too about anyone holding a chart coming in search of my son. We wandered here and there and thought of going to wait at my son's class room in another block. On the way we found a few students of my son's class coming and my daughter went and checked the red coloured chart in a girl's hand and found it to be the one her friend sent. On inquiry we found that the girl carrying the chart received from another boy who was asked by his teacher to carry it and keep in the room where my son's class students were displaying their exhibits.

In the whole process, my daughter did not plan for the contingencies and never took care to have right information . Ironically, we could not contact her friend too on her mobile on which we frenetically tried for over an hour. We have all conditions for ending up in failure to deliver the chart (which was very important and the first introductory chart to be displayed). Had we missed the students who were carrying it to the venue (which could have happened very easily) the chart would have landed in a 'blackhole'.

Murphy's Law operates when we take care of all possibilities of failure and still we may get a setback from unknown corner. Here, in our case, in contrast, we never took care of any possibility of failure and had ideal conditions for a set back.

Here is the Satyasai's Reverse Murphy's Law is at work.

Murphy's Law

In this post I talk of Murphy’s Law, which I read on www.mindtools.com. This website is an excellent source for many management topics. They are not only professional but also appealing to the layman. In Hindu philosophy, we talk of karma. When something has to go wrong it will go wrong.Everything happens according to our karma. This is simple fatalism. But the hidden spirit behind this karma theory is to inculcate the habit of taking things in proper perspective and without getting frustrated. In practice people tended to misinterpret and practicing in a negative way. Murphy’s Law resembles this karma theory in its intent according to my understanding. The following excerpts are from www.mindtools.com. Read and comment:
“In its simplest form, Murphy's Law states: If anything can go wrong, it will. However, as with many successful business theories, the original law has been extended over time to cover specialist areas, several of which are given below:
• Project Planning: If anything can go wrong, it will. Usually at the most inopportune time.
• Performance Management: If someone can get it wrong, they will.
• Risk Assessment: If several things can go wrong, the one you would LEAST like to happen will occur.
• Practical creativity: If you can think of four ways that something can go wrong, it will go wrong in a fifth way. “
How To Use The Tool
You feel stressed when events that you did not expect to happen occur. And your stress is increased when this happens at the least ideal time. To reduce the stress you feel, you need to take back control!
The following steps will allow you to predict the outcome, and because you are initiating the event, you also know when it will occur. As you go through the steps, your confidence will increase thanks to your application of Murphy's Law.
Step 1:
Butter a piece of toast.
Step 2:
Think of two or more things that could happen if you dropped it. Are any of these more likely to happen if you are wearing suede shoes or are about to set off for a job interview or meet your prospective parents-in-law?
Here's an example of how Murphy's Law can help when things go wrong.
Simon L Tod had recently been promoted to the role of Production Manager at a toy manufacturer. He felt honored to have been chosen, and knew it was because he had always worked hard. But as the peak production season loomed, he was feeling more and more stressed. Things kept happening that he wasn't expecting, and they always seemed to go wrong at 5pm on a Friday, or just as the team were starting work on an urgent order.
Simon mentioned his concerns to his boss, who suggested he apply Murphy's Law to his work to identify what would go wrong and when.
So, on Monday Morning, Simon drew up a list of the key things he had to do that week, when they needed to be completed by, and some of the ways they could go wrong. He also estimated the likelihood of things going wrong in this way. His list included the following items
Task Schedule Risks
Stuff batch of 1,000 teddy bears Delivery to Customer by 8am on Wednesday Stuffing machine will break (10% chance)
Stuffing Machine operative off sick (5%)
Courier company won't deliver on time (5% chance)
Assemble 2,000 toy cars 1 to boss for his son's birthday (on Friday). Remainder to Customer any time on Friday. Wheel supplier sends wheels late (20% chance)
Wheel supplier sends wrong size wheels (10% chance)
On Monday, everything progressed to plan. It was all looking good on Tuesday morning too. But after lunch, when there were still 200 teddy bears to stuff, Simon was called to the workshop by an anxious Quality Control Supervisor who was holding quite the lumpiest teddy bear he'd ever seen.
Simon picked the toy up and squeezed it. Instead of being soft and cuddly, it seemed to be filled with solid items that crunched against each other. Soon, all became clear: the stuffing machine operator had managed to fill the teddy bear stuffing machine hopper with car wheels. The machine had broken these up as they passed through it, but it had still managed to fill the bears. All of the car wheels were now in little fragments; Mostly inside furry bear bellies.
As Simon stood holding the crunchy bear, he saw the courier company van draw up outside the loading bay doors. He now realized that Murphy's Law had predicted that something other than the risks he'd predicted would go wrong, just before the deadline. This allowed him to stay calm and think fast.
He got his packaging supervisor to print out extra labels to put on each bear's box, offering $200 to the first purchaser who sent a bear back to the factory, un-tampered with, correctly identifying what the bear was filled with. The crunchy bear line turned out to be one of the company's bestsellers that year.
Simon ordered more wheels from his supplier, who thought the teddy bear story was so funny that he gave Simon an excellent discount, not only on the repeat order but on future orders of the wheels too.
That left one problem to resolve - a little boy's birthday present. The new batch of wheels couldn't get to the factory till Friday morning - which was too late. So Simon suggested that his boss bring his son down to the factory after school on Friday for a special treat - to see his new car have its wheels fitted. The little boy was thrilled and so didn't mind the fact he'd not has his present at breakfast that morning.
By apply Murphy's Law, and expecting the unexpected, Simon L Tod remained in control throughout a week that would otherwise have proved to be very stressful.

Try this out and be happy.
Que sara sara
(whatever will be will be)

Modelling the project system 1

This post gives the presentation on the overview models used in the planning process.
see the presentation here

Project formulation and Appraisal

In my previous post I dealt with project selection process. My discussion of selection of projects presupposes availability of detailed project reports (DPRs) in respect of all the projects in the zone of consideration. I do not want to elaborate the process of preparing detailed project report here unless somebody really asks for it. DPR is a document that communicates all the details about the project under consideration, like project objectives, technical aspects, commercial aspects, financial aspects, economic aspects, possible risks, feasibility analysis, so on. However, I would like to direct you to two publication of Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). First one is a field guide for project design and implementation- with reference to project on women in community forestry. This guide will surely help one in designing projects effectively. See the details and the link below.

A field guide for project design and implementation - Women in community forestry
link: http://www.fao.org/docrep/t8820e/t8820e00.htm
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS, ROME, 1989
Reprinted, 1991

The other one is Aquaculture project formulation authored by David Insull Senior, Fishery Planning Officer, FAO Fishery Policy and Planning Division, andColin E. Nash, Programme Leader, UNDP/FAO Aquaculture Development and Coordination Programme. This is available online at: http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/T0403E/T0403E00.HTM

This publication details the entire project cycle in aquaculture projects. The book is in two parts. First part covers introduction to projects and second part deals with project identification, preparation and appraisal.

Project formulation

(For detailed guidelines see FAO “Guide for Training in the Formulation of Agricultural and Rural Investment Projects”)

The Six Phases of Project Formulation
The three stages of the project cycle are Identification,Preparation and Appraisal. These can be further broken into six phases as below, which may have some overlaps.

Phase I:Preparatory Organization
Phase II: Reconnaissance and Preliminary Project Design
Phase III: Project Design
Phase IV: Analysis of Expected Project Results
Phase V: Project Documentation and Submission
Phase VI: Project Negotiation



PHASE I: Preparation for Project Formulation
Step 1 -Project inception
Step 2 - preparation of a formulation workplan.

The output is the programme of work for project formulation.

PHASE II: Reconnaissance and Preliminary Project Design
Step 3 - analysis/diagnosis of the situation from an overall perspective;
Step 4 - analysis/diagnosis of the situation from the perspective of the main interest groups involved;
Step 5 - assessing the future without the project
Step 6 - outline specification of a possible project.

The output of this phase is the preliminary design of a project, including identification of its main features, such as location, type of participants, main activities, size, timing, organizational structure, and management system. It may be called a project reconnaissance and preliminary design report and also called a project prefeasibility study.

PHASE III: Project Design
Step 7 - detailed technical and socio-economic investigations,
Step 8 - more precise definition of project objectives, targets, and design criteria,
Step 9 - design of individual project components,
Step 10 - design of project organization, structure, and management arrangements, and
Step 11 - project cost and revenues estimation, and first financing proposal.

The output of the phase is a full description and costing of the project, together with a proposed financing plan.

PHASE IV: Analysis of Expected Results

Step 12 - financial analysis,
Step 13 - economic analysis,
Step 14 - social analysis, and
Step 15 - environmental impact analysis.

The output of the phase is the determination of effects and impacts of the project.

PHASE V: Project Documentation and Submission
Step 16 - project documentation and submission.

The output of the phase is the project document.

PHASE VI: Negotiating the Project
Step 17 - project appraisal and negotiation.

The output is a project fully ready for implementation.

Project appraisal:
As we can see above, appraisal is the last step in the project cycle which involves negotiation.

The aims of appraisal are to:

1. evaluate the financial, economic, and social objectives of the project;
2. verify the procedures of the project formulation team;
3. recommend the conditions which will ensure that the project objectives are met; and
4. ensure that the proposed grant/loan/expenditure is in accordance with the policy of the financing institution.

Project appraisal is a process of verification of the situation in the field and a scrutiny of the report. The form of appraisal will vary according to the type of project. For production-oriented projects it will normally include the following aspects:
1. technical, for example, engineering design and environmental matters;
2. financial, for example, requirements for funds, the financial situation of the implementing agency, and of project beneficiaries when appropriate;
3. commercial, for example, procurement and marketing arrangements;
4. social, for example, sociological factors and expected impact of the project on certain groups (such as ethnic minorities and women);
5. institutional, for example, organization and management arrangements, the requirement for arrangements of technical assistance, project monitoring and evaluation;
6. economic, for example, project costs to the national economy, and the size and distribution of benefits.

The format and content of any appraisal report changes with the agency, bank, or corporation concerned, and is their internal reference document. Thus, its reflects their views, and not those of the project formulation team. It is on the basis of this report that the project is formally approved. It is also the reference document for the implementation agreement and subsequent evaluation made.

Here I give a link to WORLD Bank's appraisal report for State Highway project in Andhra Pradesh. You may download the appraisal report of the Bank in pdf format. The report gives all the analysis the Bank made based on the project report submitted to them. The report is an internal document prepared to assess the feasibility before approval.

The report is organised into 5 blocks:

BLOCK 1: Project Description

Covers Project Objectives, Project Components , Benefits and Target Population and Institutional and Implementation Arrangements

BLOCK 2: Project Rationale
Country Assistance Strategy Objectives Supported by the Project, Main Sector Issues and Government Strategy, Sector Issues Addressed by the Project and Strategic Choices, Project Alternatives Considered and Reasons for Rejection, Major Related Projects Financed by the Bank, Lessons Learned and Reflected in the Project Design, Indications of Borrower Commitment and Ownership, Value Added of Bank Support

BLOCK 3: Summary of Project Assessments
Economic Assessment, Financial Assessment, Technical Assessment, Institutional Assessment, Social Assessment, Environmental Assessment, Participatory Approach, Sustainability,
Critical Risks, Possible Controversial Aspects

BLOCK 4: Main Loan Conditions

Effectiveness Conditions, Others

BLOCK 5: Compliance with Bank Policies

ALso contains annexures that tells the top decision making body about the Bank's lending programme ongoing in the country in question and its experience thereof, country profile, etc.