The 4 best mind mapping programs for project management
Oct 21st, 2008 | By Chuck Frey | Category: Tips & Techniques
If you’re looking for a mind mapping program that will enable you to do project management – including Gantt charts – there are only four that offer this feature: MindManager Pro 7 (utilizing JCVGantt, which Mindjet recently acquired), OpenMind 2 Business Edition, MindMapper 2008 and iMindMap 3 Ultimate.
All four of these programs operate roughly the same way: You first add topics to your map, representing each of the elements of your project. Next, you add start and end dates to selected topics, which designates them as tasks. Finally, you switch to a Gantt view, and each program utilizes the start and end task dates to populate the horizontal bars for each task within the Gantt chart. Dependences are created from the relationships between parent and child topics in the mind map. In other words, a top-level topic in the map that has three sub-topics will be displayed with the top-level topic as a summary task in the Gantt view, and the three child topics as sub-tasks that are dependent upon the top-level one.
Let’s take a closer look at how each program implements this important capability:
MindManager + JCVGantt: JCVGantt 3 is integrated into the MindManager Pro 7 toolbar, making it easy to do the “front end” work of formulating your project in MindManager, and then move it over to JCVGantt. Because JCVGantt 3 is still a separate application, you can also open it separately (without MindManager) and insert tasks and dependencies into it. You can also record milestones, percentage of completion and costs for each task and sub-task, and generate total cost reports for the major segments of your project. In addition, you can customize many project management parameters in JCVGantt 3, including the currency in which costs are recorded, the length of workdays and the dates of holidays, the default duration unit used in the Gantt chart and much more. If you want the maximum amount of control over all parameters of your project and the reports you can generate from it, this is a powerful project management solution.
OpenMind 2 Business Edition: In OpenMind 2 Business Edition, you can attach detailed task information to individual map topics, including start date, end dates, priority level and resources. The program’s task/timeline Info dialog box, which you use to enter task information, contains a button at the bottom that says “enable project management.” When you click on it, the program automatically checks to make sure that any task information you have entered into your map is modified to be compliant with popular project-management software – which could save you a lot of frustration when you import your map into your project management software. You can also display your map’s task information as a GANTT chart. The OpenMind Business Gantt view lets you define and modify project scheduling data quickly and easily, including dependencies, constraints, completion values, task duration, lead/lag times, resources, priorities, critical path, milestones and warnings of scheduling conflicts. You can also generate various HTML reports such as a “Project Summary”, a “Who Does What” and a “Completed Tasks” report. Next to JCVGantt 3, OpenMind 2 Business Edition is the next most powerful project management tool.
MindMapper 2008: MindMapper 2008 displays a split map/Gantt view, which includes percentage complete, start and end dates, duration, actual and planned costs, and notes. You can also define resources within MindMapper, or import them from an Excel spreadsheet. In addition, plus and minus icons in the Gantt view enable you to “roll down” (expand) and “roll up” (contract) the amount of detail shown, which may help you to manage the amount of data displayed for complex projects with numerous sub-tasks.
iMindMap 3 Ultimate: This new top-of-the-line version of iMindMap 3 enables you to track task start and end dates, milestones, durations, priorities (on a scale of 0-10) and percentage of completion for each task.
Other high-end mind mapping software programs, such as ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5, enable you to record task data on map topics, and can export to popular project management formats, but they don’t natively support a Gantt chart view.
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Very descriptive but not analytical. It must be difficult when you have to be friends with all of the services, so I understand. Still, it would be a much better article if you did some real analysis and offered opinions.
Chuck, Thank you for the review . Interesting to know how MindManager stacks against other applications. I would like to add a few of observations about MindManager Pro & JCV Gantt.
When JCVGantt is visualising a map, no new file is created, the data is stored in the MindManager file. This allows you have a window open for both applications, make a change in one and it is immediately visible in the other.
MindManager will import and export MS Project and MPX files.
JCVGantt will display the Critical Path.
l recently published an Introduction to using MindManager & JCVGantt in my blog. If you create a plan which follows some basic rules, the impact of changes will be calculated correctly.
http://www.applications.cabre.co.uk/2008/10/using-mindmananger-and-jcvgantt-to.html
Eric, it’s not that I’m “friends” with all of the software developers. It’s just that I don’t do enough heavy-duty project management in order to put these capabilities through their paces. You may have noticed that when I do mind mapping software reviews, I do create one or more maps with it, and then explain what I discovered as I used the program – telling you what I liked and what I found to be unintuitive. If you’re a project manager who uses these project management capabilities on a regular basis and would like to do a guest post on this blog, please let me know.
SmartDraw should have made your list of best mind mapping programs for project management. SmartDraw, like all of the other software projects listed, allows users to convert a mind map to a Gantt chart with a single mouse click. Users can add new topics and subtopics to a mind map using the SmartPanel or using basic keyboard shortcuts, and one can easily move topics or subtopics around the map with a mouse. All child nodes are automatically and appropriately styled. Furthermore, the software converts the mind map to a Gantt chart automatically with a single mouse click and the user can toggle between mind map/Gantt chart views to make the editing process easier. In addition our Gantt charting capabilities allow users to denote dependent tasks, milestones, co-tasks, and child-tasks. Lastly, SmartDraw also has the capability to hide and reveal different levels of your mind maps in order to make them easier to read and edit, and you can also add notes onto any node just like how you can add notes to any field in Excel.
Given all of that, SmartDraw should have made your list.
[...] your projects throughout their life cycle. Not only is mind mapping software a powerful tool for defining the scope of your project, but also for tracking progress, managing tasks and milestones, and capturing key learnings at the [...]
Thank you. I found this post really helpful in getting to see the mimd map/project management tools I might want to buy. I would never have found some of those or would have taken ages to learn about them.
Interestingly, the cheaper one on that list looks best for me (complete functions in one tool – no extra modules needed for project management; no paid training).
cheers,
Luke
I have been using the ConceptDraw Office for mindmapping and project management and everything in between. It works great and works for both windows and MAc.
I am very surprised to see that not many reviews have been written about this wonderful software
Thank you it is great one, I found good PMP mind map designed by PMEA
check out this site http://www.pmeassociation.com
http://www.pmeassociation.com/index.php?page=pmmindmap
I don’t know which application they used. but I like it.
thank you again
Please help – Which Mindmap software can I use to edit a.3MAP file