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Mind Mapping as a Project Management tool
PMI TPSIG Newsletter, June 2007
Mind Mapping as a Project Management tool
PMI TBC Newsletter, June 2007
Mind Mapping: an Invaluable Tool for Scheduling
by Stephen Orr, AMD Software

Project Management

Increase the productivity of your project management meetings with Mind Mapping!

Faster, easier and more effective than traditional note taking, MatchWare OpenMind Business software is the ultimate brainstorming tool. OpenMind Business lets you instantly capture your ideas and present them visually as a Mind Map. While brainstorming, you can add any number of branches and sub-branches to your Mind Map to represent different ideas or tasks, enter notes and comments, and even attach relevant files to any branch.

OpenMind Business is the ideal tool for presenting hierarchical Work Breakdown Structures (WBS), as it provides different views including Mind Map, Top-Down and a Left/Right view and allows you to switch between these views instantaneously.

Once your brainstorming phase is complete, simply drag and drop the branches of your Mind Map to transform it into the necessary Work Breakdown Structure.

OpenMind Business also lets you insert graphics on the Mind Map to illustrate specific concepts: according to the Mind Mapping theory, the inclusion of visual elements significantly clarifies thinking and boosts retention.

Turn your ideas into action plans!

Apply task information including the following in the intuitive Mind Map interface:

• Scheduling information
• Resources
• Priorities
• Completion levels

This information is easily shared, thereby allowing all team members to participate in the planning and execution of your projects and maximizing results.

For further task management, you can easily export your Mind Map to Microsoft® Outlook. You can also import existing task lists from Outlook into OpenMind Business and synchronize versions of the same task list stored in both OpenMind and Outlook to eliminate redundancies.

Instantly display your Mind Map as a project plan.

Using the OpenMind Business built-in Gantt view, you can use the familiar Gantt chart representation while making use of all of the standard project management features.

The OpenMind Business Gantt view empowers project managers and anyone involved in project planning to manage their project schedules from start to finish with maximum efficiency. Its user-friendly visual interface lets you define and modify all of the following project scheduling data quickly and easily:

• Dependencies
• Constraints
• Completion values
• Duration
• Lead/Lag times
• Resources
• Priorities
• Critical path
• Deadlines
• Milestones
• Warning of scheduling conflicts

Once your schedule is established, OpenMind Business lets you track the status of your project as it progresses by allowing you to view the entire project timeline, examine the critical path, assign priorities, set completion values, check deadlines and milestones and avoid scheduling conflicts. You can also generate various HTML reports such as a "Project Summary", a "Who Does What", a "Completed Tasks", etc.

Integrate with Microsoft Project

OpenMind Business even lets you export your project plans to Microsoft® Project for further development or to share them with other project managers. You can also import existing project schedules into OpenMind Business directly from Microsoft Project or via the Microsoft Project XML format, in order to take full advantage of OpenMind´s Mind Mapping and brainstorming capabilities.

XML import / export

The OpenMind Business XML Import feature allows you to convert third-party file formats to the Mind Map format even if you don´t own these third-party software applications. Conversely, the XML Export feature lets you integrate OpenMind Business documents with other applications by simply implementing a transformation file.

In project management, collaboration is key!

MatchWare OpenMind Business provides an effective collaboration tool by seamlessly integrating with MS Office, offering innovative views such as the Timeline view, and allowing easy distribution with a free viewer and advanced print functions.

Integration with MS Office

No need to recreate data when you want to hand out planning session notes or immediately pull together PowerPoint presentations. With one click of your mouse, OpenMind Business allows you to convert your Mind Map to an outline in Word or to a finalized PowerPoint presentation. OpenMind Business comes with professional templates that are customizable and easy to use. You can even import Word and PowerPoint files into OpenMind when you want to see an overview of your project.

Microsoft PowerPoint
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Project

FREE OpenMind Viewer

The MatchWare OpenMind Viewer enables you to share your OpenMind project with colleagues or clients who are not OpenMind users. Anyone can view your project plan in any view within OpenMind, filter and print it. If you have attached graphics and external files to your project plan, just save it using the "Pack & Go" feature to enable the Viewer to display all these elements. The free viewer can be downloaded at any time from MatchWare´s website.

Project Timeline

With a single click of your mouse, switch from the Gantt Chart view back to the Mind Map view or to the Project Timeline view. This lets you present your project plan visually to audiences unfamiliar with Gantt charts. You can also export your Project Timelines to HTML or print them in poster format. Simply specify how many pages your Project Timeline, Gantt chart or Mind Map should use, check the preview and click the Print button.

Print

MatchWare OpenMind's print function allows you to spread your project plan over as many pages as you like and then print it as a large poster. This is an easy and effective way to present your professional Gantt chart at your next meeting!

MatchWare OpenMind Business is the only project management tool you need.

It offers all the flexibility, speed, power and security a large corporation needs- at a price even a small business can afford!