Proven Productivity Tool Produces High Quality Thinking
April 20, 2021

Proven Productivity Tool Produces High Quality Thinking

Stephen Davies | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with MindManager

We use MindManager in a variety of situations: brainstorming, note taking, process design generation, process design refinement, survey design, etc. etc. It is used across our organization by all our creative professionals. It is our go to tool for thinking individually as well as collaboratively - we use it to design and facilitate conversations with our clients and partners.
  • Strategic Planning
  • Brainstorming
  • Process Mapping
  • Enterprise Collaboration
  • Meeting Management
  • Project Planning
  • It helps us organize our thinking both individually and collectively.
  • It allows us to signify (vote up/vote down) key pieces of our thinking and to negotiate the categorizations that we might apply
  • The ease of use and the ability to make changes on the fly in real-time allows us to keep the conversation flowing at a pace that keeps everyone engaged - super low friction
  • I confess that MindManager already has way more functionality than I use so there are no shortfalls in my experience. Perhaps one area would be the format painter? Sometimes I find that a bit finicky.
  • Linking branches on a map is sometimes a bit clunky - I find it difficult to manipulate the handles on the connectors.
  • I'm just nitpicking now...fundamentally I have no cons to offer.
  • Productivity - Shortening my thinking time to an outcome - when I have a problem to think through, my first choice is MindManager. It gives me the space to simply get everything down on the page and then sort it all out.
  • Quality - The quality of our thinking is improved when we think together using MindManager - we never stop at first answers and MindManager allows us to think deeper and find connections that were not previously considered.
  • Control - Often we will use MindManager to maintain a list of client requirements and success factors in a single place. This has helped us out many times from an engagement management and control standpoint.
Here are three specific examples:
  1. Scoping and bounding a client engagement over the course of several conversations - often our clients are only able to give us time in 20-30 minute segments, and we need to maintain continuity over those meetings. We have scoped out complex client engagements using MM as the visual continuity tool with the client.
  2. Designing public consultations - MM has helped us track the key stakeholders that must be engaged and their interests in focus. It has helped us maintain the scope of the consultation and determine formats/techniques for each target audience.
  3. End of Project Debriefs - we use MindManager for our lessons learned. We recently ran a lessons learned session in less than a quarter of the usual time taken by using a smart prompt and a simple MM template to support content capture.

Do you think MindManager delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with MindManager's feature set?

Yes

Did MindManager live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of MindManager go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy MindManager again?

Yes

I recommend MindManager to all of my clients, students, and partners. When they see how I use the tool in a live demonstration and can see how it supports the work flow and conversation, they want to try it for themselves. I have recommended MindManager to more than 40 or 50 people in the last 2-3 years.