Mindjet MindManager 6 Mac - Drielingh · 2006-06-07 · Mindjet MindManager 6 Mac provides a visual “map” that captures every element of a project into a single shared interface

Mindjet MindManager 6 Mac

Capture Ideas, Organize Information,and Share with Clients

Introduction 1

Bridging the Too-Much-Information Gap 2

Creative Thinking is Non-Linear 2

A Map to Productive Collaboration 3

Evolution of an Adaptable Project Plan 4

Capture 4

Organize 4

Share

The Power of a Visual Interface 5

Map Access Across Platforms 5

Points of Contact Across the Project 6

Summary 7

Table of Contents

For any agency, department, or consultant that serves business clients, a major part of the interaction is constant information exchange. Be it a creative agency working on a marketing campaign, an internal department scoping project requirements, an expert consultant working with a government bureau, or any similar specialist-client relationship, the information loop must be managed effectively. As a project progressesfrom kick-off through research, ideas, concepts, budgets, timelines, drafts, feedback, and revisions, glitches inthe smooth exchange of information can derail it at any point.

One of those potential glitches is operating system incompatibility. Many creative agencies, service bureaus, and consultants work on Macs or in a mixed-platform environment. The Mac is often the system of choice forillustration, design, and other visual fields, and many in the creative and consulting communities have embracedthe Mac for its innovation and quality. When Mac users deal with corporate or institutional clients on a Windowsplatform, however, a file-format bottleneck can have impacts ranging from a minor communications hang-up to a major loss of productivity.

Mindjet® MindManager® 6 Mac is designed to keep that collaborative information exchange flowing smoothly in a Mac or mixed-platform environment. MindManager provides a single interface for all the plans, ideas, documents, and data that pass back and forth from agency to client-an information-organizing structure of unparalleled adaptability. With the introduction of MindManager 6 Mac, collaboration and creativity can flourish-regardless of operating systems.

Mindjet MindManager 6 Mac - Capture Ideas, Organize Information, and Share with Clients

Introduction

1

“Mindjet may have created the most significant revolution in userinterfaces in a long time. Mindjet's MindManager is basically avisual tool for developing and managing the relationshipsbetween ideas, objects, or people. It's incredibly powerful and,most importantly, it's something new in the interface world thatmight actually help define the future of how we use software.”

– “Information Revolution” by Joshua Greenbaum, Contributing Editor, Managing Automation, October 27, 2005

Consider the overload of elements that play into the typical agency project. Meetings, brainstorming sessions,emails. Action plans, budgets, deadlines. Presentations, artwork, spreadsheets. More meetings. More emails.It's a project manager's full-time job just to juggle all these factors and keep every participant up to date, everypiece of relevant data accessible to all who need it.

Productivity suffers when workers have to track down information, copy over meeting notes, cut and paste con-tent from one application to another, or hunt through email trails to find an answer. Looking for and retrievinginformation can waste between 15% to 35% of a knowledge worker's workday.1

Creative Thinking is Non-LinearCompound these inefficiencies with the fact that none of these processes really capture information the waypeople truly think-in a non-linear fashion. Instead, workers have to mold their thoughts to the way most applica-tions function: in a linear manner. The result? Lost time and creativity, disconnected ideas, and information thatis not meaningful or actionable.

What effective projects need is a single bridge between agency and client, worker and data, plan and execu-tion. Project managers, account executives, and team members should be able to:

• Capture ideas and information-quickly and efficiently

• Organize ideas and information in a way that makes sense for the project and is easily understood by all involved

• Share these ideas and information regardless of operating system and organization type.

Like all Mindjet products, Mindjet MindManager 6 Mac provides these capabilities. At the same time, it ensuresthat Mac users can effortlessly interact with Windows-based clients and collaborators.

1 International Data Corporation (IDC), “The High Cost of Not Finding Information,” Article published in KMWorld - Vol. 13, Issue 3, March 2004


Bridging the Too-Much-Information Gap

2

Mindjet MindManager 6 Mac provides a visual “map” that captures every element of a project into a singleshared interface. From the first brainstorming session to the final iteration, every idea, topic, action item, email,supporting document, comment, edit, and revision can be amassed within this map and accessed by everyproject participant

• Text-based data

• Images and artwork

• Action items, tasks, resources, milestones, red flags, due dates, etc.

• Ideas, thoughts, and comments

• Live hyperlinks to relevant content on web pages or other documents

• Embedded files that can be conveniently accessed from within the map

Mindjet MindManager 6 Mac - Capture Ideas, Organize Information, and Share with Clients 3

A Map to Productive Collaboration

Fig. 1 Placeholder for a screenshot with creative-agency-type topics

Business and institutional clients hire creative agencies and consultants for their special skills and expertise-andevery project is a unique interplay of talents, needs, and objectives. Mindjet MindManager brings a free form,adaptable context to that interplay, allowing project leaders and team members to capture, organize, and shareinformation the way that best serves each project's needs.

Capture:

In a project's earliest stages, exploring ideas, gathering information, and assembling a team can be like filling a shoebox with the data points that will eventually cohere into a finished product. With MindManager, project leaders can easily gather a project's raw material without being constrained by a rigid structure or a linear process. Picture the classic white-board brainstorming session: any idea can be freely voiced, and thinking without boundaries can yield productive leads towards more developed ideas. MindManagerlets project leaders capture this kind of spontaneous creativityalong with essential nuts-and-bolts data. As the project evolves, users can add more information at any time.

Organize:

With MindManager, users can rapidly transform that raw material into an actionable project plan. It's simple to establish relationships and hierarchies between topics.Associating tasks, resources, timelines, and deliverables with ideas becomes easy and straightforward. Backgroundinformation can be linked. By amassing all these interrelatedtopics and tasks within a single visual interface, the mapbecomes a “dashboard” that lets team members see both thebig picture-the entire project and its ultimate goals-and thedetails within.

Share:As the project progresses through phases and revisions, and the MindManager map continues to evolve, it serves as a communications bridge between agency and client, projectleaders, and contributors. Rather than emailing spreadsheetsand task lists to everyone involved in a project, participants can share a single, comprehensive map that's constantly updated. And the introduction of MindManager 6 Mac ensuresthat file-format incompatibility doesn't obstruct this ongoing,interactive dialogue.


Evolution of an Adaptable Project Plan

When agencies and consultants work with corporate and institutional clients, at times the two sides seem tospeak different languages-with a project manager as a reluctant translator and go-between. MindManager 6Mac's powerfully intuitive visual interface helps all project participants grasp the project's scope, objective, and development. With all project elements “on the map,” it's easy for team members to stay updated andinformed. Even with a large, complex project with many participants, users never lose track of what they're trying to accomplish.

Mindjet MindManager 6 Mac is designed to enable at-a-glance understanding of how topics, tasks, and plansare organized. The basic hierarchy of cascading main topics and subtopics creates the foundation. Visual cuessuch as color-coded flags, relationship boundaries, and style-codes give more detail. Users can add icons andimages for emphasis or explanation. These intuitive visual tools let users understand relationships and depend-encies between tasks and topics, and see clearly which tasks are completed vs. still in progress. By trackingprogress against clear objectives in this way, leaders can more effectively manage resources and priorities.

However, team members don't always want to look at the big picture, so the MindManager interface makes iteasy for users to drill down to relevant details. It can filter out topics and subtopics that aren't essential to thetask at hand, and bookmarks can help individual users home in on their own topics and responsibilities.

Map Access Across PlatformsA free MindManager Viewer is available for both Mac and Windows, so everyone who needs to follow theprogress of a project can access a read-only version of a MindManager map. Only those team members withthe full licensed MindManager application, however, can make and save changes. Therefore, map “owners” onboth the agency and client sides can control how the project evolves, while still sharing access to all informa-tion across company and operating-system boundaries.

Mindjet MindManager 6 Mac fully integrates with Mindjet's Windows-based MindManager products. In a mixed-platform environment, licensed users on both platforms can read, revise, and exchange the same MindManagermap freely. Regardless of its platform of origin, any document or data attached or linked to a MindManagermap can be opened and edited by either Mac or Windows users. A project leader can protect the integrity of amap by adding a password, so only those licensed users who know the password are able to make and savechanges.

Furthermore, the free MindManager Viewer enables team members to see every part of the map and use everycapability-except for editing and saving changes. Readers can expand and collapse subtopics and comments,download attached documents, and follow hyperlinks.


The Power of a Visual Interface

The agency and the client can interact on as many-or as few-points of contact as the project demands. Forexample, if an agency graphic artist were working with a client content expert to create graphics for the project,the two would be able to add content to the map and make other changes-as long as they both used the fullMindManager program for their respective operating systems, and were given the map password by the projectleaders. Another kind of project might demand a tighter configuration, where only one project leader on eachside controlled changes to the map. By funneling all information through these map owners, the project's evolu-tion could be closely monitored. The way the map is used to exchange information is completely adaptable tothe nature and needs of the project.


Points of Contact Across the Project

6

Agency and ClientInterface

Clients Goals and Objectives

Agency Deliverables

Mindjet MindManager 6 Mac is a versatile, powerful, and adaptable interface between business clients and the agencies and consultants who serve them. MindManager captures and organizes every aspect of a project,from the big-picture goals and plans to the finest details and timelines. It fosters both freewheeling creativityand disciplined management. It streamlines communication and enhances collaboration-and does it all on aMac platform that freely interacts with Windows.


Summary

7

“Before we started using Mindjet MindManager, it would havetaken me one week to put notes into some kind of organized form,another week to decipher the opportunity in an intelligible format,then one more week for us to digest everything and come to adecision. Mindjet MindManager allowed us to accomplish in fourdays what used to take three weeks.”

– Ed Sullivan, President, IBC

Corporate Headquarters

Koshland Building1160 Battery StreetSan Francisco, CA 94111 USAPhone +1 (415) 229-4200Fax +1 (415) 229-4201E-Mail [email protected]

EMEA

Mindjet GmbHSiemensstrasse 3063755 AlzenauGermanyPhone +49 (0)6023/9645-0Fax +49 (0) 6023/9645-19E-Mail [email protected]

United Kingdom

Mindjet (UK) Ltd.Peterbridge House - 3, The LakesBedford Road, Northampton NN4 7HBUKPhone +44 (0) 1604 638666Fax +44 (0) 1604 230910E-Mail [email protected]


Mindjet Corporation

© 2006 Mindjet LLC, U.S.A. All rights reserved. Mindjet® and MindManager® are registered trademarks of Mindjet LLC in the United States and/or other countries.

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Mindjet MindManager 6 Mac - Drielingh · 2006-06-07 · Mindjet MindManager 6 Mac provides a visual “map” that captures every element of a project into a single shared interface