Item: MindManager
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

MindManager is currently being used by my team and one other within the IT structure. We use it for many reasons, recently to formulate ideas which help in the development of technical white papers and to gather thoughts and ideas in the development of a team SharePoint site.

Pros and Cons

We use MindManager for gathering thoughts or brain storming. It is particularly good at this and allowing ideas to be shuffled around as needed.
I used MindManger in the creation of a technical white paper. It allowed me to add categorized topics and thoughts as I researched the paper.
I have used MinManager to capture and categorize business requirements during the initial phases of projects I was working on. And using the icons, I was able to check when they were validated, and what percentage of work completed.

The latest version allows for some data modeling capabilities, however they are not up to the level we currently use in Visio.
I wish it was easier to create separate groups that could be built upon, instead of one main group and smaller other groups.
I wish the linking between groups could be improved. You can add lines between the different topics, however it gets quite messy quickly. Maybe if alternative hierarchy structures could be created between topics, and allow the switching between layouts.