Learning by... Avoiding mistakes (Richard Gaskin)

[Keith Clarke]

Mind Manager http://www.mindjet.com/products/ has been my go to 'problem dissection' tool for the last 15 years or so. I use this instead of 3x5s for pretty much every problem, brain-storming session, research activity, workshop meta-planning session, project plan, etc. 

It's much richer than FreeMind and the multitude of other mind-mapping apps more suited to 'drawing mind-maps' for recollection, than visual information mapping and management per se. 

I find Mind Manager most useful in the early stages of a new challenge - before the nature & complexity of the problem takes shape. It's very useful for envisioning workshop sessions, kicking-off projects, etc. If the problem stays manageable with what is effectively an outlining tool (to do lists, projects, documentation / web sites…), I stay in Mind Manager. Otherwise, I migrate to a tool better suited to the required deliverable. 

For development tasks, I find mind-mapping in Mind Manager's Org Chart mode great for charting processes, web sites, Use Cases, basic UI navigation, etc. The Windows version of the app is also great for project management. I also have Mind Manager for Mac but that's a far inferior product - and I've been trying to migrate to Curio http://www.zengobi.com/products/curio/ for years!

The biggest problem with mind-maps is the fact that they, unlike concept-mapping tools, are inherently hierarchical in nature. However, it is possible to abuse the tool's original design, hide the map's lines and use node relationships - more like a concept diagramming environment. Talking of which, I've also tried to use Cmap http://cmap.ihmc.us and Compendium http://compendium.open.ac.uk/institute/ for mapping multi-dimensional problems but I find it gets unwieldy, especially when it comes to exportation or communication with others - unless they play 3D chess! ;-)

I hope that maybe helps someone.
Best,
Keith..      

On 25 Mar 2013, at 17:04, Ronald Zellner <zellner at tamu.edu> wrote:

> Has anyone here tried using "Mind-mapping" software  for development?