MindManager is a mind mapping and project management tool that aims to boost users’ productivity. It is designed to facilitate a wide range of project types, and includes cross-platform functionality and 3rd party integrations.
$105
per year
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect
Score 6.4 out of 10
N/A
Enterprise Architect is the flagship architecture management platform from global, Australian-headquartered company Sparx Systems.
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 …
It is well suited for a quick prototype of product/development planning to show relationships amongst the APIs used. This helps developers understand the impact of the product changes and identifies the need to update integration components to avoid erroneous deployments. I have not personally experienced a less appropriate scenario at the moment.
Enterprise Architect can be used to capture business requirements, design and management of all successive models, algorithms, process flows/workflows, design of business data objects and other artifacts. The strong point is the ability to link the items in all models with each other, the more time the analysts and designers "invest" into making nice and clearly defined models, the higher the future pay-off by any successive changes to the systems. Enterprise Architect is not a good tool for capturing rather unstructured business requirements, use e.g. Confluence or other solutions instead. EA should comprise the extracted models with very little unstructured information. Management of the changes process should not be done in Enterprise Architect, rather use JIRA/Confluence or similar.
Open Architecture - A wide and extensive set of options, plug-ins and customization options make Sparx EA more of a tool kit than just a tool. Most tools allow customization but Sparx EA is built from the ground up with this in mind.
Wide variety of formats, lexicons, standards and data import export capabilities allow different roles to interact with the information in different ways.
Automated report generation allows architects and designers to spend less taking on word processing and more time on performing architecture and design.
There should be some more functionality in the Notes window, such as a "Paste Special " Icon in the notes area to maintain format control.
Although I create many of my own Web export templates, an add-on for web export design would be great, as I regularly create Interactive Electronic Technical Publications (IETP) in HTML export format.
The ability to sync Map shortcuts between devices would also be welcome. I use MM on three devices, and I have to add or amend the Map list individually. My maps are on OneDrive, so using them should not be that hard if they are cloud-based.
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.
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 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.
MindManager stands out for its wide range of export options, customization and how they have enriched the format over time. As a constantly evolving tool, and having tried others, I consider it superior for the abovementioned reasons. Its cross-platform nature has been decisive, and although there are many alternatives in the form of web applications or the like, MindManager presents itself as a more complete and robust option.
BiZZdesign represents a different new concept to enterprise architecture, its gravity center is not technical modelling, but rather a view on capturing the whole end-user experience or customer journey. It also allows to grasp areas as internal company capabilities, required for adoption/changes and operation of the solution, uses the same Archimate modelling language. This solution is in my opinion a new generation enabling to not only design the solutions, but also manage the whole application portfolio with respect to capabilities and requirement parameters.
For a single person business presentation it is a plus.
Project difficulty is well assessed using the map.
Giving away a paper version of a map is a positive gesture. People like the map, the look, and what it says, and it may also be a way to promote MindManager to them.
Keep the PDF or JPEG saving capabilities for small customers like me. It's important.
