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Mind management

Struggling with your project? There are plenty of project management software tools out there to help.

Andrew Wilcox explains how mind mapping and MindManager can help you improve communication, speed up project development and enable you and the team to access project knowledge

Creating and managing projects is something we all do. Sometimes we think we have control of everything and sometimes we feel as though we have very little control. In fact neither is quite true. Actually it is not control that matters. What matters is having quick access to correct and full information, a process to make sure everything is covered and the ability to share this information rapidly with all parties. It does not matter where you are in the team, everyone needs the best possible view and insight in to their role and responsibilities in the project. In a well-run project all members of the team know why, who, where, when, what and how everything is. This article seeks to show how Mind Maps and MindManager can help you get the picture, share the information and be in control.

Tony Buzan started mind mapping in the mid-70s. He wrote several books, had a TV series and created a very large and wide variety of people who use his techniques. Tony’s basic proposition is that mind maps have a central idea out of which radiates the details. Mind maps should be colourful, organic and pictorial. This helps you to memorise them and one of mind mappings first successes was with students.

Mind maps are now being used to write books, plan events, overview processes, plan interviews, and prepare presentations, by people ranging from preachers, students and teachers to senior managers in multi-national companies and government organisations. This article, however, will focus on how to use maps in projects, including your final year project.

MindManager software was created by Mindjet (www.mind-map.com) ten years ago and has been distributed for many years in the UK by M-Urge (www.murge.com). MindManager takes the original concept and gives the PC user the ability to create maps in a structured way and use them within the Microsoft environment. The graphics are handled for you, inserting or clicking adds branches, and links can be made to external documents. You do not have to draw anything unless you a want a new symbol. The style of the map is controlled by various toolbar functions. You can have very organic maps littered with symbols or just plain text on lines. What you are actually constructing is a database, which is visualised as a map. Branches can have symbolic codes, colours and highlighting which can be used later to control views or output to other applications.

The added value of MindManager is the depth of detail you can give to branches and the branch relationships. Branches can have notes containing text, tables, pictures and hyperlinks. They can turn into paragraphs, chapters or Web pages. They can have dates, resources, priorities and hyperlinks. Finally the map can be converted to a Word document or PowerPoint or a website; or it can be synchronised with MS Project and Outlook and exported to other project managers via MPX files. Aah! There seems to be some key project items in there.

Task breakdown

Creating the task breakdown and relationships is key to a good project start. There are many ways of doing this, from covering a wall in ‘post-its’ to direct entry into your project-planning tool. MindManager is a very effective tool which lies somewhere between the two. You can get the creativity of the post-its by adding task branches as they occur to people in a brainstorming meeting. Having a PC projector is better than huddling around a monitor or taking it down on paper or flipcharts and creating the map after the meeting. Alternatively, everyone brainstorms individually and the project leader then combines the maps and shares the result online or at a team meeting. Structuring this information is easy. Branches can be dragged and dropped, whole assemblies can be dragged to different positions, and tasks can be numbered and sorted. Members of the project team in different locations can enter information using the built-in conference facility from remote locations.

Now you can start adding more information: known dates, estimated duration, task owner, priorities and categories. Maps are normally read from 1.00 p.m. going clockwise. You can add relationships and other important data such as dates and resources. In the application a task pane displays the data for the selected task and provides one of the data entry methods. When you have a large number of tasks, the level of detail exposed on any branch can be controlled. So just one stage can have its entire task exposed. Alternatively sub-projects can be turned into new maps with a link to the parent project. These are added in MindManager using the branch relationship tool.

After synchronising with Microsoft Project a full project time plan can be produced; useful when you consider that your final year project usually constitutes one quarter of your final year, and that one quarter of 23 weeks is about 6 weeks (42 days) – you cannot do a PhD level project in 42 days! All the task names, timing and resources have passed to the project plan. If changes are made to the tasks, then after synchronising, these changes will be visible in the map. Once synchronised, MS Project becomes the master for certain pieces of data: dates, resource and duration. But percentage complete can be changed from MindManager and new tasks added.

Don’t just use MindManager to create a project, use it to monitor project progress. You can import a project at any stage, and then using the Power Select function you can look at Bill’s tasks or the late ones etc., and input the missing tasks. This gives a very different view to a time line or the critical path analysis view of the project. New risks and opportunities will be spotted. Any amendments made in the map can be synchronised back to the project plan.

MindManager software is also able to export information to PowerPoint and Outlook, create extensive websites and has a range of project specific templates. There are a number of companies creating add-ins to MindManager, many focused on its project application. The best example of this is MindManuals (www.mindmanuals.com) which has created a complete project guide. This takes the user through the project process, provides them with starter templates and prompts the user continuously to think carefully about the project.


With thanks to:
Andrew Wilcox is an independent consultant and trainer
Tel: +44 (0)1962 738534
Email: andrew@ajwilcox.co.uk