Visual Elevator Pitch

San Antonio Light: “One Picture is Worth a Thousand Words.”

Problem – Visual Elevator Pitch for Projects

Your enterprise projects require participation and support from many stakeholders. To get all stakeholders on the same page at the beginning of each project, you need a simple way to communicate your project’s vision and value to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Ideal State

At the start of a project, your can summarize its purpose in an elevator pitch that clearly conveys the problem addressed, the proposed solution and the expected business value. A “visual elevator pitch” that highlights the project’s business value in a visually appealing way will help convert the broadest audience into immediate advocates.

Root Cause

Senior project stakeholders often make or approve key project decisions, such as project funding. They are usually very busy and have little patience for large documents, wordy presentation decks, or confusing explanations. Moreover, they are often overwhelmed by information overload and confusing jargon. They want information, like a project’s purpose, to be presented in a concise way that is very easy to consume. This will facilitate rapid and supportive project decision making

Context for Visual Elevator Pitch for Projects

At the beginning of a project, you will have many short interactions with busy stakeholders who may not be familiar with your project, so will not yet understand its purpose. To quickly gain their support, you need to be able to articulate a concise project overview. You can achieve this with an elevator pitch that conveys the project’s value proposition in less than 30 seconds. This elevator pitch should be organized to communicate the project’s value so clearly that the recipient can explain it accurately to other stakeholders after hearing the elevator pitch for the first time. An unclear purpose can confuse project stakeholders, create detractors and accelerate project failure. A clear purpose can lead to positive word-of-mouth from a cadre of enthused advocates.

Solution – Visual Elevator Pitch for Projects

At the outset of a project, the project leader must immediately seize the leadership position. To establish leadership, you need a concise way to communicate both your vision and the strategy you plan to use to achieve that vision. An elevator pitch is a concise way to achieve this. In your elevator pitch, you should include a clear definition of the problem addressed by the project, the solution approach, a quantification of the business value delivered and your project schedule. All within 30 seconds. In short, your elevator pitch must deliver a compelling rationale for your project. If the response is “that is interesting” then your elevator pitch is not compelling enough. A successful elevator pitch will compel the recipient to relay your project overview to others without prompting.

If you believe a picture is worth a thousand words then a graphical version of your elevator pitch, in the form of an infographic, will be even more compelling. This “visual elevator pitch” should be a sequence of pictures or images on one page rather than a barrage of words. It should illustrate the business context before the project and the expected business context after the project. The before and after graphics should be aligned in such a way that the benefit is visually evident without much explanation. In addition to illustrating the value, it should also clearly illustrate the problem and the solution. This problem/solution infographic should also be visually appealing and contain very few words. In the before section of the infographic, use images that clearly highlight the problem and the pain. In the after section of the infographic, use a sequence of images that clearly highlight the solution and reinforce customer delight. In this case, the customer is the main beneficiary of the project’s output and may be a role that is internal to your organization.

Your Feedback

Enter your comments below so we can update this post and provide better solutions for the community. Also, if you have created any project management tools or templates that you would like to contribute for communal use then please send each one, with a brief description, to PMTools@LeanProjectPlaybook.com.

Business Opportunity for the Project Infographic

Using an infographic to visualize the problem/solution fit for a project creates an opportunity for a new system that converts natural language into graphical representations. Let us know if you would like to collaborate as a part of our community to transform this opportunity into an easy-to-use solution that will help non-technical stakeholders visualize the benefits of a complex project.

Alternatively, if your company is willing to contribute some of your time to help specify a solution to meet their specific needs then they will receive free licensing for an agreed period of time. This project requires a project manager, an architect, a business analyst, a developer and a QA lead.

Simple Life Lesson

Everyone should have a personal elevator pitch. Whether you are seeking a job or not, you should be able to state your strengths and how those strengths add value to your organization in less than 30 seconds. Studies have shown that people can usually remember 2 to 4 bullet points.  You should therefore highlight 2 to 3 of your strengths in your elevator pitch and clearly link them to business value. State these strengths as a passion rather than a job. Also, show that you enjoy your work rather than see your work as just a job.

You can use portions of your personal elevator pitch in job interviews. Your personal elevator pitch will also be helpful when you bump into a VP for the first time at a business event and they ask you about your role. An example is the following: My name is Joe Bloggs. I am a project manager in the IT group. I love to lead a creative team and solve unexpected problems. I enjoy seeing our project team deliver on time and see our customers enjoy the benefits of the new features that we deliver.  It really is rewarding work.

An effective personal elevator pitch may be the first step in you being considered for a new position, even if you are not searching. Alternatively, your personal elevator pitch may lead to you being added to that new exciting project.

Innovation Incubator

• Are you tired of using the same old Project Management tools and techniques and getting the same unacceptable results?
• Have you developed a project management tool or technique that has improved the performance of your projects?
• Is your organization interested in trialing innovative project management tools and techniques?

Contact us to list a project management tool that you have developed or to trial of any of the following innovations:

6SigmaPM – A proactive project health check. It measures your project’s vital signs then recommends corrective actions to prevent a negative trend becoming an actual problem. The benefit is predictable project performance.

JoinMyOrder – A group purchasing system. You submit a purchase order, other like minded customers also make a commitment to buy, then suppliers compete for the high volume purchase order in a reverse auction. You receive the price, terms and conditions normally available only to much larger organizations.

Crowd Bootstrap – A startup ecosystem in an App that offers innovation as a service. You sponsor a startup accelerator and determine its industry focus. The accelerator invests business services from independent contractors into selected startups to help accelerate their progress. You get access to the startup’s team, knowledge, products and services. You receive the benefits of an accelerator without the usual costs. It is “innovation-as-a-service” in an App.