1     Salutation

Begin with the salutation.  Replace the placeholder “Xxxxx” in the salutation with the name of your main/technical contact in whatever way you are referring to him/her — for example:

• Dear Mr. Smith (the formal default)
  – OR –     Dear Richard (if now on a first-name basis)
  – OR –     Dear Rich (if he also goes by a shared “nickname”)
  – NOT–     Dear Mr. Richard Smith (awkward, form-letterish)
• Dear Ms. Jones (the formal default)
  – OR –     Dear Susan (if now on a first-name basis)
  – OR –     Dear Sue (if she also goes by a shared “nickname”)
  – NOT–     Dear Ms. Susan Jones (awkward, form-letterish)

In other words, if you are not on a first-name basis and, thus, refer to him/her with Mr. or Ms. or Dr., etc. being a title of respect, then just use their last name, not first and last.  Note that professionally, Ms. is often used over Mrs. or Miss and eliminates the risk of inaccurately identifying her as married or unmarried, respectively.  Of course, Dr. is the appropriate professional title for someone, male or female, with a doctorate degree (Ph.D., D.Ed., M.D., D.O, D.D.S, etc.) and there are other more specific ones like Prof., Dean, Judge, Senator, … that may be appropriate.

2     Content

Your customer cover letter will begin by briefly describing what documents are accompanying it, following the opening phrase “Attached please find” that is included in the template.  When doing so, do not simply copy and paste from the latest — the PCR cover letter — and change PCR to PTR and cut some specifics of content.  Further, unlike the internal review that included the PMB, the tech-memo, and some TAD pages, this release is simply this cover letter with a single attachment — the PMB.  In other words, please take care that you do not indicate items being attached that are not.  With just a little thought this is easy to do right and well.

It should continue in a second paragraph beginning with when the review meeting took place and who participated.  Continue with a brief description of the outcome of your review, including any substantive suggestions/feedback/direction you received.  Obviously, this paragraph cannot be written before your review meeting.  Thus, write it after your review meeting and feedback is provided (replacing the placeholder “OUTCOME DESCRIPTION PENDING REVIEW MEETING”).

In a third paragraph (replacing “START THIRD PARAGRAPH HERE”), which CAN AND SHOULD be written BEFORE the review meeting, you should then give a brief indication of where you are headed and what can be expected at the end of the semester/project (hint:  on-campus plus streamed final report presentation, followed by a web-conference project closeout meeting, then delivery of any prototype and a written final report covering the results of the project).

The letter should then conclude with a solicitation of comments from your customer.  Since this is important to avoid confusion as to what you are asking for (and since some teams otherwise have not included this), it is in the template for you as “There is no specific feedback we are seeking; however, please let us know at your earliest convenience if you have any comments, corrections, or concerns.”

Your added paragraphs must be short enough so that the entire letter (including the cc directives on the bottom) fits on one page without change of formatting (its already single-line spacing).