As a long-time Mindjet employee, I’ve been an avid user of our desktop products for over twelve years. Recently, I’ve been using our web-based products more often in my daily workflow. I find these tools more conducive to quick note taking and thought entry as I move around the office and from meeting to meeting. Sound familiar?
Going Agile Across the Organization
As Mindjet evolved in a more strategic, agile direction across the organization, it gave several of its employees specific agile/scrum training from Agile Learning Labs. Along with a number of my colleagues, I became a Certified Scrum Master. Recently, I received an invitation from the Scrum Alliance (of which I’m a member) to attend the upcoming Scrum Gathering on May 5-7 in Las Vegas, NV.
So, here’s a great place to use Mindjet’s collaborative workplace product suite: creating an ad hoc team with my fellow scrum masters.
Create Ad Hoc Agile Teams Using Mindjet
Using Mindjet for creating an ad hoc project with people from disparate organizations is fast and easy. I created an “Agile Event” project space in the Mindjet Tasks app, and then quickly entered some tasks and thoughts.
Next, I invite my scrum master friends via email. We’re all part of the same Scrum Alliance, so they trust my invite and accept quickly.
My scrum master colleagues can join the ad hoc team by using either their Google or Facebook logins. I really like this feature, because it means they’ll join fast without having to create and remember yet another set of credentials. (I, personally, have over 100!)
Now we’re members of the same Mindjet collaborative workspace ecosystem.
Scrum Masters Working Together
Once the project space starts filling up with new members, I assigned each of them a task to help contribute to the event. After all, we’ll be an agile “self-organizing team” —after I organize it! The Scrum Alliance loves its masters to contribute to events, so I’m hoping we can all brainstorm some cool topics that would be of interest to other scrum masters. For this, I create a task for “brainstorming presentation ideas” and add the others as “followers” so they’ll receive notifications asking for a good time to brainstorm together. After we agree on a meeting, we’ll all login to our web product to work collaboratively on the same map in real time. Cool, yes?
Project Ideas, Thoughts and Tasks Using Mindjet
In the brainstorming session, I get the ball rolling by entering some ideas and thoughts using the respected Mindjet for Windows desktop product, which supports quickly turning these ideas into tasks. (I like to think first, and then decide what to do about it afterwards. )
After creating a task, I sync it with our web Tasks product so that it will insert into my ad hoc “scrum master” project space.
Map view:
It’s easier for the new Mindjet ecosystem members to collaborate using our web Map and Tasks apps since they don’t have to get permission from the company IT people before installing it; with the desktop clients, installation might be a more formal process. Since our Mindjet apps work together, this lets each scrum master choose their own method for collaborating with us: Windows, Mac, Web, or Mobile.
Showing Mindjet’s Agile Value to Management
I frequently need to create, work with, and show value from ad hoc teams both within and outside the organization— and I bet you have needed to do this as well. Several colleagues at other organizations followed the process I describe here, and now use Mindjet with their teams and Agile/Scrum practices on a regular basis. Export your Mindjet stuff to PDF and show your boss. I’m sure you’ll get a Yay!