Visio Mind Map

Today I have been investigating how to communicate a mind full of notes to my project team.  Previous companies have allowed the use of mind mapping software, either in house or on-line.  My current client is a bank and limits the use of the internet and does not allow users to download software of use various web site, especially web applications.  We are a heavy user of the Microsoft Office suite (with the exception of email) and I am limited.   

I am planning to present my current thoughts on the project approach, initial architecture design and implementation phases to my management.  I was going to create a mind map in Powerpoint, but discovered that Visio has a mind mapping template.  I have successfully created two linked mind map pages within one Visio file, which is really useful.  this was achieved by using the double-click behaviour of the shape within Visio. 

I may break down my project onto separate pages within the single file, which is much easier than using my usual mind mapping software with many files.  Does anyone else use this approach? 

One question I do have.... Can you attach some text to a box within the mind map and then print all of the text out as a document, rather than a mind map?  That would be really useful. 

Here are some simplified instructions for those how would like to try. 

1.  Open Visio and from the menu select "File -> New -> Choose Drawing Type..." 
2.  (Using Visio2003) Select Category -> "Brainstorming" and Template -> "Brainstorming Diagram" 
3.  Drag a Main Topic into the centre of your page and rename the text caption 
4.  Make sure you have the "Brainstorming" tool bar and then start adding sub tasks by highlighting the Main Topic and then clicking on the "Sub task" button in the tool bar. 
5.  Continue to add sub tasks to the Main topic, or even to the Sub-Tasks to make a hierarchical mind map. 

Enjoy! 

Project Management newsfeed

I have used a site called Planet Lotus for many years, keeping up with all of the blog articles relating to Lotus Notes.  This site is a valuable tool in today's busy world as it provides a collection, in date/time order, of all of the blog entries created by people in the Lotus Community.  It is a fantastic resource.

I am moving more into the Project Management world, I was looking for a similar resource.  It does not exist.  I am now trying (for free) to get a PM Community together and a collection of feeds to provide for all.

Here is the link.

I'd appreciate a mention to your PM's and hopefully I can grow this into a similar useful community site, just like Planet Lotus.

Dependancies

I inherited a new project yesterday and I was reviewing the project plan written in MS Project.  I can use MS Project, but I am not an expert.  I have created close to a hundred plans over my short Project Management career and would say that I am comfortable with the tool. 

Well, this project plan was obviously created by an advanced user, as it had many constraints and dependencies.  I did not understand the concept of some of the dependancies, for example SS (Start-to-Start) and Start-to-Finish (SF).  Some even had extra days after then, such as "28FS + 5 Days". 

I came across a simplified article on the Microsoft website, which explains the concepts of all four (SS, SF, FS, FF) dependancies in the form of a small project to deliver a Wedding Cake.  Here  is the link. 

Project Planning

As a contractor, I have found that there is no standard tool for planning my projects. I can understand this as every project is unique and different companies work in different ways in terms of planning and reporting.

When I tell people that I am a project manager, they often jump to the conclusion that I am an expert with the well know software package, Microsoft Project. Well, I can say that I can use the software, but it is sometimes too much to use for smaller projects and too difficult to use for some larger, more complex projects.

In terms of reporting from MS Project, I like the way that the project can be broken into phases and a percentage complete can be marked against each task within a phase to give the Phase Percentage Complete, which in turn is used to calculate the Project Percentage Complete.

A tip that my first Project Management mentor taught me was to NEVER mark a task as a percentage complete, other than 0% or 100%. Something he installed in my thinking was that a task is either complete, or it isn't. If you want to mark the task as a part-completed, he told me to add sub tasks and mark each of those as either complete, or not. This way you can see a true reflection of the tasks that need to be monitored.

I find sending out a project plan is a little difficult. Most people,other than project managers, do not have MS Project, or even a viewer installed on their machines. This usually results in me printing the plan to pdf, which usually does not work very well. For this reason, I tend to use Excel to define the high level project plan and to show the progress. This was a tip passed on to me from an Australian college at a previous workplace. It is clear and simple, plus everyone in the company tends to have MS Excel installed.

What tools do you use and how do you share your project plans and progress?