Introducing Integrated Gantt Charts and Resource Planning Capabilities
Welcome to part three of this four part series (Part 1: Interactive Slides; Part 2: PowerPoint Integration). One of the toughest things to do is to effectively track and manage the various components and resources tied to your various projects and initiatives. Often times, we get pulled in a million different directions and are asked to keep our work on schedule with a plethora of tools that don’t easily work together. The result is a fragmented view of what’s really going on which can be disastrous.
With this release, we’re introducing easier ways to develop plans for everyone, not just professional project managers. Start your planning with MindManager by brainstorming and building out all the necessary tasks, resources and dependencies. In 9, we added the ability to instantly view this as a project timeline (Gantt chart) and powerful resource planning views to highlight and potential scheduling issues (e.g. overbooked resources). We used to sell this capability separately in a product called JCVGantt. With this release, you get the timeline and resource views included in your MindManager Version 9 purchase or upgrade. Professional project managers can continue to export and import their mapped plans into Microsoft Project for more robust project scheduling and reporting capabilities.
In addition to the Gantt chart view, we’ve also added new resource planning capabilities that enable you better understand if anyone on the plan is over or under-utilized. It’s so easy to use, you do not have to be a professional project manager to develop actionable plans that make sense!
Define your tasks, assign resources & dependencies, and MindManager will do the rest – highlighting where potential trouble spots exist to help you avoid costly delays.
The Resources Pane (below) provides you with a list view of all of your trouble spots so that you can tell, at a glance, what your resource utilization levels are. If you want to see a specific task on your map, simply click on the task and MindManager will highlight and navigate you to that specific topic on the map and Gantt chart so that you can make adjustments as needed.
The Resources Pane also allows you to manage your various resources so that you can accurately track and manage their availability on a daily and weekly schedule so that you have an accurate reflection of utilization as it relates to an individual’s work schedule.
With these new integrated project timelines and resource planning capabilities, you can ensure that your plan makes sense and critical resources are properly allocated to get the project done, on time and within budget.
Article #4 of this blog series will cover MindManager 9’s new integration with Microsoft Outlook and the power of the new Outlook dashboards which will allow you to create dynamic branches of your Outlook tasks, contacts, emails, and calendar items in your map and even visualize them in MindManager’s integrated Gantt chart.
If you happened to miss any of the previous articles, feel free to click on any of the articles below to get caught up. Thanks!
Blog Series: What’s New in MindManager 9?
1. The Power of Slide Presentation Mode
2. Build Map Presentations Easier PowerPoint Integration
3. Ensure Project Success with More Extensive Planning Support
4. Stay in Sync with Dynamic Outlook Dashboarding
That’s all for now! Happy mapping!
Wayne Chan
Mindjet Product Marketing