It’s that time again. We’re pleased to announce August’s Mappies Award. This month’s winner is Paul Schwartz who is a managing partner at QAvantage.
This month’s award winning map is all about emphasizing how mind mapping is a powerful and easy way to capture and organize a substantial amount of information. For all you project managers out there, you might want to pay attention to this month’s winning map!
I briefly caught up with Paul to get to know a little bit about the personality behind this month’s Mappie winner.
Q: Where are you from?
A: Born and raised in central New Jersey. Graduated from the University of Maryland (Go TERPS!) and stayed in Maryland for 12 years. Relocated to Connecticut for an employment opportunity and returned to N.J. one town over from where my wife, Linet, and I grew up. My 2 teenagers desperately want to move to Cali! I think we’ve all had our fill of the East Coast!
Q: What do you do?
A: Managing Partner at QAvantage & Program Manager Consultant for the integration effort of Morgan Stanley with Smith Barney, Wall St. NYC.
Q: How do you use MindManager?
A: MindManager and the add-in gateway we built is a core component of our internal Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) methodology. We also use both the add-in and MindManager extensively with our clients to re-invent their SDLC methodology. We do requirement workshops to ‘map’ out exactly what features our clients are looking to implement, build the stakeholder communication plan, refine the map to describe the detailed requirements of those features, etc. We then take that elaboration and in a few strokes through the MM9/RTIME Add-in Wizard their entire vision is organized in a complete relational database to manage the entire SDLC of their product development.
Q: Which words of phrases do you most overuse?
A: I’ll have a Pale Ale.
Q: What is your favorite occupation?
A: After 20+ years of IT consulting, it would be amazing to settle into an occupation that involved Linet, our 17 year-old daughter Corie, 19 year-old son Steven and Hunter (age unknown) our vicious attack dog from the shelter that my wife managed to turn into a gentle, lovable pile of mush.
Q: What is your life Motto?
A: If you always tell the truth, then you never have to remember what you said.
Q: What’s winning the Mappies feel like?
A: I was very excited to learn that I won the Mappie based on the PMP Study Guide map. There is no doubt that creating the map and studying from it actually made an exam that many people fail in their first attempt very easy. I hope it does the same for others.
Want to win a Mappie? Not really sure what a Mappie is? For more information about the Mappies check out Maps For That.com. Mindjet is currently taking map submissions for September until the 15th, so get out there and submit your best map and maybe you’ll be the proud reciepent of a Mappie.