Forecast vs. MindManager

Forecast is well suited for tracking schedules, especially if it is only being controlled by a single department. When it comes to using Forecast in a larger ecosystem with more "cooks in the kitchen" it would be helpful to have the software more easily integrated with other software.

This is the single best tool to help visual learners express themselves on complex matters in my opinion. I have tried and used other programs that have certain elements, but this is far and away from the best option for me. The more complex the problem, the more that using this pays off. I tend to start in almost brainstorming mode and then move to group items and either arrange them in terms of process flow or simply organizationally.

• Assign and allocate resources.
• Identify lean departments and identify areas to increase headcount.
• Manage agile teams.
• Identify bottlenecks in departments or resourcing.

• Great to segment things out (projects, organizational charts, processes, workloads, etc) and gives you a full picture of the job.
• It is user friendly, simple to use, and powerful.
• MS Office and Teams integration is great. Allows for easy collaboration.
• Great GUI and visuals
• Excellent method for project planning and brainstorming

• Not as intuitive as its companion software, Harvest. This software takes longer to learn when on-boarding new staff. It is also difficult to view time notes without needing to physically open them up. This could be improved by expanding the "on hover" functionality. Personally, having spent as little time in workflow software is really important, as it gives me more time to code.
• Because we use this software to plan schedules, items often fall through the cracks. I would like to see some more sophisticated syncing with not only Harvest but also with Asana.
• Lack of integration with Asana. It would be nice to pull data from forecast and display it in Asana. This would be helpful for understanding how much time I have to spend on a project rather than bounce back and forth between web apps.

• I find formatting a challenge. Example, make all the boxes the same format and fonts so when you add a box, it understands the format of the top level box.
• I have played around with some of the templates but find creating my own each time is better route. The project plan template is very good but I find myself deleting boxes and again, takes more time than creating a new map every time.
• I try to get colleagues to use MM but they are intimidated by the UI. I am really comfortable with it but to them it can look more complex than it really is.

I feel the main issues of the old Mindjet seem to be gone with the
Corel purchase. With the huge advance of sharing via browser HTML even 1
user can affect many. And, actually, using MM kind of forced my rigid
brain to rethink how I categorize and classify information/projects.

The
idea of paying $69USD for an annual cost is more than fair and a great
model for Corel/Mindjet to keep rolling out improvements!

MindManager is very intuitive. The user interface is not cluttered and the ribbon icons are easy to understand. Several excellent "how-to" videos are available on the MindManager site as well as on YouTube. MindManager starts quickly and the user interface is very responsive. Launching other programs from MindManager such as Excel is very fast and issue free. The browsing feature is lightning fast. The drag-and-drop capability is also very fast and reliable.

Never had any errors.

The application is quick and responsive. We are able to produce mindmaps and reports with ease. The program is not complicated at all and integrates well with software and programs like Microsoft Outlook and Teams, which we truly appreciate.

I have not needed support for Forecast.

I have called technical support a few times. During the COVID Crisis, I called a few times repeatedly due to a rush request. The technical support guy called me back in minutes. He somehow knew that I had called repeatedly and wanted to make sure my issue was resolved immediately

The videos are not well categorized...I had to do a bit of digging to get what I wanted and many videos on older versions. If Mindjet was to improve the titles used that would help.

Not applicable

I have not used any other scheduling software other than Forecast. The company selected Forecast because it is used in conjunction with Harvest. The pair of web apps can be used to pull detailed data. This is very important to our agency, and making data-driven decisions is exceptionally important to our agency mission.

Both are equally good. Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is used to get the models in a more technical format in comparison to the MindManager. MindManager is easier to use in comparison to Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect. MindManager makes collaboration easy and can be understood by a layman and does not need to have specific software training.

A team can collaborate on the same project but cannot create a shared project file. It would be helpful for that feature to be added.

• Allow departments to run efficiently.
• Quickly identify whether departments need to hire.
• Easily visualize project gaps in resources.

• When scope planning before I was introduced to this tool, I needed to make one master Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) for the entire project and move on. With MindMapper, I typically generate about 20 WBS-like charts throughout the project, which encouraged conversation with staff members. The major key in such ease of use has been some well thought out and very intuitive keystroke planning that allows me to keep up with the free flow of ideas.
• This software's cross-functional capability allowed 10 engineers to create their projects directly within their own environment without use of a virtual machine.