Is your Brain on Hot Air Working on Project Planning? Keep cool with Mind Maps by Dr Vijai Mariaraj
Project Planning is an inevitable process for handling any project, be it small or big. Successful and timely execution of a project is vital to any project. Hence proper Project Planning is indispensable.
The elements of Project Planning will involve estimating time for different segments of work, time planning for various layers of tasks, monitoring and supervising, separating the most important from the less important ones, meeting the deadline, being ready for any unexpected situations or contingencies, taking remedial action so the situation does not get out of hand and effectively managing people. All these calls for a minute and intricate mapping of details, so you don't miss any, as the price you have to pay for any wrong move will be rather heavy.
In such a vast range of work that covers a whole gamut of services, Mind Mapping can help you greatly. It can be a highly useful tool for plotting your way to the minutest details of work and execution. You can use Mind Maps to record the different scales of job involved. You can start from the basic to the final stages of Project Planning by letting your thoughts have a free rein on the main project.
Breaking them into different units, you can do a Mind Map analysis for each of the work unit involved. Once you have identified different elements of Project Planning, you can work out the team that will be executing each element of the Project. Brainstorming on the work to be undertaken with the team members, will help in eliciting different viewpoints and suggestions. This will also help in evoking complete participation of the team, their suggestions and ideas, assigning time and appointing a team leader for overall execution of a job. Since everyone is actively involved in the conception and execution of the project, it builds a sense of purpose and team spirit.
There could also be individual brainstorming on the main task objectives for each segment of the work team. Then the issues that each individual provides can be compared and co-related with the team brainstorming output. In this manner, from the most mundane and simple tasks to the highly complex, every aspect of the work can be imaginatively and creatively assessed using the Mind Map tool.
Since Mind Map is a simple but powerful device that uses the parallel processing capabilities of our brain, each stage of task execution can be approached in the most imaginative and yet effective manner. As Mind Map uses associations and links, it will be possible to gain new perspectives and unknown dimensions.
Once different segments of work are outlined clearly and each task segment is explored in full, the various elements of the Project Plan execution can be integrated into a single Mind Map. So at a glance, you will gain a comprehensive picture of the whole Project for execution as well as have a control over every level of task execution. Such a process will not be possible in a formal listing kind of work to be covered. They are an end in themselves and do not facilitate the process of association or connection between the different elements.
Mind Map therefore can be an excellent tool for capturing the intricate particulars involved in every stage of Project Planning and reworking them at will, while providing the big picture of synchronization among the various elements.
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