The Mindjet Blog

Posts Tagged Project Mgmt

MindManager 8 for Mac: Address Book Integration

Sep 18

Posted by MichaelDeutch in MindManager, MindManager for Mac, Tips n' Tricks

AddressBook_090918Sync your Address Book to simplify task resource assignments!

As a continuation in the weekly series of what’s coming in MindManager 8 for Mac, we’ll illustrate how you’ll be able to sync all or selected groups of resources into MindManager.

Once you’ve added resources into your map from your address book, assign them to projects tasks! This will build consistency across your maps and save time during planning.

Here’s your sneak peak peek (thanks Phil, this was written pre-coffee!): Read the rest of this entry »

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Streamline Project Management with Project Mapping

Sep 9

Posted by MichaelDeutch in Mindjet

Join Mindjet for a special webinar presented by Dr. Andrew Makar, an IT program manager with project delivery experience in the Automotive and Financial Management industries. Andrew is an enthusiastic leader who combines project management theory, mind mapping, and project execution into practical application.

Discover how to streamline your projects with tactics, templates, and project management and mapping best practices.

Join us Thursday, September 10th at 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM PDT to see how MindManager will help you to… Read the rest of this entry »

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How to Analyze, Map, and Engage Stakeholders

Aug 10

Posted by MichaelDeutch in Mind Map Examples, MindManager, MindManager for Windows, Mindjet

Stakeholder management is essential for any successful project.

Understanding your stakeholders leads to better strategies, decisions, and acceptance of change within an organization. Stakeholder analysis is an effective approach to mapping out and understanding key stakeholders for any type of initiative from solution selling to internal change initiatives (e.g. using a force field analysis map). It’s where you identify and analyze stakeholders to plan for their effective engagement throughout the project. Read the rest of this entry »

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50 Ways to Use Mind Maps to Drive Project Success

Jul 29

Posted by MichaelDeutch in Mindjet

Do you want to deliver your projects successfully? Pretty obvious answer, right…

The great news is that you’re already using or may be exploring how to use MindManager. If you’re new to MindManager, the software offers a way to visualize you and your team’s thoughts, ideas, and information into dynamic MindManager maps (often referred to as mind maps). The result? You’ll see the big picture and uncover new opportunities, communicate more effectively, and make better decisions.

Many customers that I’ve spoken with initially associate MindManager with brainstorming and the development of a project plan. As you’ll see here, there are dozens of other ways that you could take advantage of mapping to improve how you think though each project, tackle problems as they arise, conduct meetings and more…

Using mind maps to think through the following will help you deliver projects faster and more successfully:

  1. Prepare a new project proposal.
  2. Provide a clear vision statement that defines what to expect from the transformed business – its capabilities, service levels, costs and so on.
  3. Specify project goals and objectives.
  4. List assumptions going into the project.
  5. Identify any constraints that will impact plans.
  6. Develop project, resource, quality, risk, acceptance, communications, change management, and procurement plans.
  7. Prepare a statement of work.
  8. Create requests for information or proposals for outside support.
  9. Understand training requirements and prepare a plan.
  10. Determine what’s in scope or out of scope for the project.
  11. Define how success will be measured.
  12. Assess costs and expected benefits.
  13. Map the links between the project and organization’s key strategic priorities.
  14. Brainstorm alternative approaches.
  15. Justify moving forward with a business case.
  16. Articulate the project charter.
  17. Compose a project brief.
  18. Breakdown the plan and implementation into manageable steps.
  19. Document all the project deliverables and key milestones.
  20. Assign resources and prepare a team organization chart.
  21. Clarify roles and responsibilities.
  22. Conduct a project kickoff meeting to align the new team with the project goals.
  23. Illustrate the project process and policies for team members.
  24. Analyze the issues and concerns of project stakeholders.
  25. Conduct detailed stakeholder interviews.
  26. Gather business, marketing and technical requirements.
  27. Specify detailed use cases.
  28. Design your solutions and conduct appropriate design reviews.
  29. Draft product or software specifications.
  30. Compose any necessary test plans (e.g. beta tests, user acceptance tests, integration tests, etc…).
  31. Manage any localization efforts.
  32. Uncover and mitigate project risks.
  33. Solve project issues and document decisions.
  34. Prioritize planned activities.
  35. Prepare meeting agendas.
  36. Engage stakeholders in productive meetings.
  37. Capture and distribute meeting minutes.
  38. Communicate project status to the project sponsor and key stakeholders.
  39. Write project communications and supporting documentation.
  40. Evaluate scope change requests and their potential impact to the plan.
  41. Utilize project checklists to ensure quality throughout each phase.
  42. Monitor project progress in a comprehensive dashboard.
  43. Assess whether or not to continue the project at each major milestone or phase.
  44. Walk though project deliverables with client to ensure acceptance.
  45. Plan out maintenance and post-implementation support.
  46. Track best practices and lessons learned throughout the project.
  47. Conduct a lessons learned meeting with project participants.
  48. Prepare a project closure report.
  49. Measure and report on project outcomes.
  50. Perform a post implementation review.

I hope that these suggestions have inspired you. Have you found other ways to use MindManager or mind mapping to help your projects run smoother and be more successful? Please add to the list. I look forward to reading your comments!

 

 

About the Author: Michael Deutch is Mindjet’s Chief Evangelist, content contributor for the Mindjet Blog and the Mindjet Connections newsletter. Get more from Michael on Twitter. 

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Integrate Your Work in Dashboards for Optimal Performance

May 7

Posted by MichaelDeutch in MindManager, MindManager: CPA Edition, MindManager: Sales Edition, Mindjet

What were you doing before you clicked the link? Did you get distracted from some other task at hand? If so, you’re not alone!

With trillions of emails, voicemails, texts, instant and social media messages flying around, it’s amazing anyone gets anything done! The cost of information overload and overwhelm is rising, now reported costing over $900 billion annually.

So, how can we achieve peak performance?

There are tons of productivity tricks to help you overcome overwhelm. Turning off email notifications, shutting down instant messenger, and sending calls directly to voicemail are simple tricks that can be implemented immediately. Blogs like Lifehacker, zen habits, and 43 folders have sky-rocketed in popularity because they’ve developed their niche providing guidance to the millions who are drowning in information and constant interruptions. One thing these blogs all agree upon: they’ve written about mind mapping and how it increases your productivity!

Eliminate Distractions with Dashboard Mind Maps

Mind maps are often thought of as a visual method to map out thoughts and ideas. Going beyond the ‘traditional’ definition, another powerful use is to create a dashboard for a project, process, your day, week, or even your life.

Maps provide holistic views of everything related to the subject, including thoughts and links to files, websites, emails, etc… With dashboard mind maps, you’ll spend less time looking for information avoiding potential distractions and more time focused on making a positive impact at work and in life!

Dashboard mind maps come in a variety of flavors; the most common are process, project, and personal dashboards.

 

Process Dashboard Maps

Process dashboard maps are created to guide the execution of a multi-step process. For instance, I’ve created a map to support my writing of the Mindjet blog. It contains links that I use to research and write blog posts. After publishing posts, I filter the map based on the post’s theme to display the relevant links where I will promote the post.

 

Project Dashboard Maps

Project dashboard maps provide quick and easy access to the project’s important information including your goals & objectives, plans, status, deliverables, etc… They can be used by individual project managers or team members or collaboratively updated (with Mindjet Connect).

 

 

Personal Dashboard Maps

Personal dashboard maps tie together everything in your life, providing you with the big picture and all the important details that matter most to you.

 

Here are three additional resources to help you create a dashboard map:

 

Tips for Creating Dashboard Mind Maps

Add Links with File Explorer
You may already know that dragging files from your desktop right onto your map creates topics with hyperlinks to the file. But there’s an even faster way to add files to your dashboard maps using the file explorer. With just a few clicks, you can link all your relevant files and folders into your dashboard providing instant access. Updates within your linked folders will appear automatically in your map when the map is refreshed with the F5 key.

Video: How to Add Links with the File Explorer

 

Access Links with the Embedded Browser
Linking to content provides the ability to organize everything visually. Take it to the next level by using MindManager 8’s embedded browser to do your work without ever losing context or perspective.

Use the embedded browser to access and work with web applications and Microsoft Office files directly inside MindManager. I recently asked the MindManager Enthusiast’s group on LinkedIn how MindManager has impacted their productivity. Here are a couple of the responses:

    “Hello Michael: I use the embedded browser functionality everyday for my projects. I have all my major deliverables for the year in one map. The topics of the map contain the various deliverables. Each deliverable has project information, links to websites, links to Excel, PowerPoint, and Word documents. I review all those documents and websites "in the map" using the embedded browser functionality. Truly a time saver!” 

—Chance Brown, Learning & Development Specialist and Visual Mapping Consultant

 

    “Hi Michael. I always have dozens of projects going in mind maps, and most of them require extensive research (writing projects, workshop/webinar development, presentations, blog posts, client proposals, etc.) Any content I find related to or in support of one of my projects goes directly into the corresponding map. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven when I first discovered the "Send to MindManager" button in my web browser several versions ago. I totally did away with the "Add to Favorites" browser process and now organize all of my web info in mind maps. But to have web and document content display right in the map interface now is such a productivity boost! Just being able to clip and paste notes from research sources directly into maps from within the same window is such an awesome time saver. Well done!” 

—Jocelyn Coverdale, Productivity Expert and Office Organizing Specialist, National Speaker and Trainer — Ballantrae Solutions

 

Integrate with Microsoft Outlook or gmail
If you’re using Microsoft Outlook, send items directly from Outlook into your dashboard maps. In the Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Notes, and Tasks sections, click either of the two MindManager icons to send a selected item or a folder to your map.

Video: Add Microsoft Outlook Items and Folders

Another alternative is linking to emails in your gmail or Google docs which is explained in the Mindjet blog post: Integrate Gmail & Google Docs with MindManager.
 

Focus on Content with Tags and Filters
Finally, the last tip to get your dashboards up to speed is the use of map markers and power filters. Adding text and icon markers onto map topics not only adds meaning and context, but also lets you filter the map to display only the information you need at any given moment.

Why bother? Here are a few general examples of how I’ve filtered maps:

  • Show items that are assigned to ‘me’
  • Hide tasks that have been completed
  • Show topics related to an area of interest
  • Display topics with hyperlinks or attachments

Other ways to focus include using shortcut keys like F3 (focus on topic) and F4 (show /hide branch). Give them a try next time you’re navigating around your dashboard map.

 

So, now a question for our readers….What’s In Your Dashboard Map?

  

Downloadable Examples:

  

Related Resources:

 

  

About the Author: Michael Deutch is Mindjet’s Chief Evangelist, content contributor for the Mindjet Blog and the Mindjet Connections newsletter. Get more from Michael on Twitter. 

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Outside the Box Project Management

May 6

Posted by MichaelDeutch in MindManager, Mindjet, News & Events

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein

This week, Mindjet was a sponsor at the PMI / New Jersey’s sold-out regional symposium, "Outside the Box Project Management". The event focused on providing project managers with the knowledge and tools to…

  • Create value for organizations
  • Provide sustainable competitive advantage for organizations
  • Motivate team members
  • Get stakeholders’ buy-in on important project decisions
  • Solve customers’ complex problems
  • Secure project financing

 

Not surprisingly, mind mapping was a HOT topic at the event. Here are a few ways maps can be applied on your projects:

  • Capturing and organizing project research
  • Solving problems and creating strategies for mitigating serious risks
  • Creating project dashboards, tying together disparate information & providing the ‘big picture’
  • Drafting and writing reports and presentations
  • Identifying milestones and required deliverables
  • Gathering requirements and conducting interviews
  • Analyzing stakeholders and project influences
  • Taking project and meeting notes

 

These types of maps and more were explored in two different sessions at the conference:

  1. Jamie Nast, author of Idea Mapping, presented "Idea Mapping – A Whole New Mind for Project Managers".
  2. Ron Krukowski, president of e-Techknowledge, Inc., PMP & professional project manager, presented "(Mind) Mapping Success Out of Chaos"

Check out these short videos of both Jamie and Ron that we captured before their sessions.

Here’s one of the maps Jamie shared at the presentation which highlights some applications of mapping for projects: download map.

 

Using mind maps on your projects? Share how you’re mapping in the comments below!

 

About the Author: Michael Deutch is Mindjet’s Chief Evangelist, content contributor for the Mindjet Blog and the Mindjet Connections newsletter. Get more from Michael on Twitter. 

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Gartner’s 2009 Cool Vendors list for Project & Program Management

Apr 21

Posted by MichaelDeutch in MindManager, Mindjet

Mindjet selected in Gartner’s 2009 Cool Vendors list for Project & Program Management

Most project team members are overbooked and struggling to keep up with the battle cry to do more with less. Gartner analysts have hand-picked 4 vendors to help companies deliver a set of tools that keeps employees productive and fully engaged on their projects.

Who made the list?

Mindjet: For team collaboration, defining the project, solving problems, capturing requirements, developing plans, and all the other project uses where ‘thinking’ is essential.

Taskline: A powerful time & task management add-in for Microsoft Outlook for team members to ensure their assigned work actually gets completed.

Evernote: An ever-popular organizer for your notes, websites & images. Evernote is popping up everywhere these days. Give it a spin.

AwayFind: A new web application tool meant to save people from themselves by letting people escape from email overload to get stuff done. Use it for free with additional for-fee features available.

Read the full Gartner report.

 

 

About the Author: Michael Deutch is Mindjet’s Chief Evangelist, content contributor for the Mindjet Blog and the Mindjet Connections newsletter. Get more from Michael on Twitter. 

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