Just been going back to using mind maps (MindManager) to compress lots of complex information into a small space. Have a go, its at http://www.mindjet.com
. I needed to summarise our team’s work for our new manager and managed to get it all on one page. You can then export the map to a website or word document. It’s really easy and very productive.
I have used this tool a lot in the past to plan reports etc. and got out of the habit because my old manager didn’t like it. Rather stupidly I have only just realised that a lot of the problems with cross linking leaves between major topics can be solved by colouring the leaves and using coloured lines.
Just discovered that I can use colours in Outlook too, to mark mail from particular individuals or groups. Much easier to sort things out now.
I don’t know, probably showing my monochrome Unix heritage.
Discovered that our Oracle Partner agreement had been lapsed in March, this means that we should licence all of our dev software and databases. The partnerships costs about a tenth of the licences and we are a small team – redoing the partnership ASAP. Not sure this would work for the big corporate Oracle shops ’cos you need to sell something based on Oracle to become a partner. But if you are a small shop look into it.
Ah well, back to planning a migration schedule of work. Much easier with MindManager.