As a Business Analyst, we are often in the role of facilitating discussions among stakeholders. There is also a need to give presentations. You may find a need to teach something to the stakeholders, for example, a quick introduction to how to use IBM Rational Requisite Pro on the project.  You may be asked to demonstrate the software being developed to groups of people throughout the project. While a requirements elicitation session is a discussion, a requirements review session should be a presentation. When your project team is geographically distributed, you can give presentations by teleseminar, webinar, or a combination of the two.

First, I need to define some terms so you know what I am talking about.

• Teleconference – a meeting of a group of people using the telephone, where items of business are discussed among the participants. Anyone can talk to anyone else in the meeting. The meeting should be facilitated.
• Teleseminar – an audio presentation by a leader to a group of people using the telephone. This may include the ability for participants to ask questions. It is not a discussion among participants, but a dialogue between the participants and the leader.
• Telewebcast – an audio presentation by a leader to a group of people using telephone and webcast software in a web browser.
• Webinar – webcast software plus the ability to show visuals.

This article addresses Teleseminars and Telewebcasts. I will just call them teleseminars in this article.

Like any other meeting, the teleseminar has a topic or agenda, a list of participants, a date, and time of meeting. Unlike other meetings, you do not have to schedule a meeting room, since each person will attend from his or her own workspace. Be sure that the meeting you are scheduling is a presentation, not a discussion. The two kinds of meetings are managed differently.

First, find out what software your company has available for you to use. Is there a bridge line or conference call service that you can use for the meeting? Do you have webcast software such as Instant Presenter, or Instant Teleseminar? If you will be demonstrating software, you will need full webinar software such as WebEx, Go To Meeting, or Live Meeting to be able to share your desktop with participants.

The better services offer a control panel to the leader which lets you see who is online, mute and unmute individual people, and has a way for participants to indicate when they have a question.

Second, you will schedule the meeting using the appropriate service, then send out an email to participants telling them what the meeting is about, what day and time it is, and exactly how to participate. Giving complete instructions makes it more likely that everyone will successfully join the meeting. I like to send out a reminder the day before the meeting, and another reminder a couple of hours before the meeting. These reminder messages can be copies of the original meeting notice.

Some of the participants may want to schedule a conference room and attend by speakerphone. I do not recommend this approach. It is very hard for the people in the conference room to hear, and almost impossible for anyone else to understand people in the conference room. If you are holding the meeting by telewebcast, it is even more difficult for a group of people to participate by looking at one computer. Encourage each participant to attend the meeting from his or her own workspace.

Finally, the time has arrived for the teleseminar. As a leader, you should call in at least 5 minutes before the scheduled start time. If the meeting will be recorded, you can start the recorder at this time. Greet participants as they arrive to the call.

In general, you will want to mute all participants while you are presenting. Allow some time for questions. You can schedule all the questions for the end of the call, or stop presenting periodically and unmute the lines for questions.  Some of the telewebcast services have a web interface where a person can submit questions. Then the leader sees the questions on a control panel. This is a very nice feature, because it allows the participants to ask questions when they occur, and allows you to schedule in the answers as part of your presentation.

If you find it too difficult to present and monitor participants at the same time, then you might have a co-leader for the meeting. You just focus on making the presentation, the co-leader watches for questions, and makes sure you are allowing time to answer them.

Another great option is to ask for questions before the meeting. You can use those questions to prepare your material for presentation.

At the end of the meeting, be sure to thank everyone for attending. If you are recording the call, let the participants know where the recording can be found. Review any action items. It is polite to unmute the lines for everyone to say goodbye. Then stop the recording and end the call.

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Do you want to know more?  I will be holding a teleseminar the week of November 30, 2009 to demonstrate the use of teleseminars.  The replay is posted on my new website: http://www.resourcesforbusinessanalysts.com in the Communicate area.

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* Article used with permission from Wyyzzk, Inc.’s Resources for Business Analysts site at http://www.writingusecases.com This website of reports and tips contains information to help you succeed as a Business Analyst in IT.

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