Category: IT Management

Mindmapping experiences

Posted by Vilius – April 25, 2008

I learned about mindmapping back in 2003 at 5th Trainers’ Camp of BEST. The technique intrigued me a so much, that I even gave the graduating training on the topic together with Ben (see photos).

Basically, mindmapping is about writing in colorful star hierarchical structure instead of intended list of items.

At the same time I learned that MindManager from MindJet is used all over in bonding’s management processes. All ideas and projects were presented in mindmaps. Most of my bonding friends were taking notes in mindmaps on their notepads with the set of colored pens.

My MSc defence presentation had mindmaps, and it was very successful, at least I was told so at that time.

Soonafter I tried to use mindmapping techniques for my PhD projects. Results were not too good though. It did not feel comfortable, it did not allow to organize information and materials easily as I wanted. Often hierarchical lists were more comfortable, and for advanced usage PersonalBrain from theBrain Technologies came instead, with One Note soon after from Microsoft. Though I remained on the mailing list of MindManager yahoo groups since.

Mindmapping returned on my working table in the role as Enterprise Architect working for CA. It appeared to be the simpliest tool to crystalize the case, indentify the drivers and their relationships, strip all unnecessary layers, and get to the core.

Other findings what I gathered about mindmapping:

  • Often I find people quite emotional about mindmapping, which surprises me. At least for me and some of my friends the value of mindmapping is not easily evident. I read all MindJet newsletters and case studies from the mailing lists, and it did not come to me easy..
  • For simple use FreeMind is quite a good alternative to commercial software
  • Mindmapping technique is one thing, and comfortable usage, management of created mindmaps, integration with other tools – is another. Happily, MindManager is quite sophisticated product (unfortunately, it means that it takes seconds to load to memory and consume quite a lot of memory and CPU resources).
  • Most natural use of the mindmapping software is to run brainstorms and sketch structures. However I personally do not see them working better than in a simple plain Notepad application.

I expect mindmapping to come back into my daily work and knowledge management in closest future for the analytical work, as well as designing and creating university course.

Review of Maturity Models in IT Governance and Management

Posted by Vilius – January 17, 2008

Yesterday I did a presentation for ISACA Lithuanian Branch on Review of Maturity Models in IT Governance and Management (7MB, PPT). Material is mostly in Lithuanian (references and copied slides are English based, though).

The discussion was done in order to raise and share some points which I observe in Maturity models of different kinds – as CMM(I), vendors and consultant ones.

It was a lovely event and a nice experience.

Thank you, Viktoras Bulavas (ISACA), for inviting me as a speaker, and Robertas Vageris from ASE.LT contributed a few great points to the discussion and feedback!

Questions on Complexity, Synchronisation, Knowledge Management

Posted by Vilius – January 13, 2008

By wondering and doing daily tasks, I constantly come back to some areas, where I feel I need to improve myself on:

  • How to manage Complexity
  • How to manage elements in sync in distributed environments (Synchronization/Federation/Reconciliation)
  • How to manage Knowledge, or improve Analytical skills

Complexity

For tackling Complexity I already had PhD studies (which introduce basics of scientific way into complexity), looked at science behind Complexity (brochure), question of Emerging Phenomenon or Engineering Problem (On The Emerging Future of Complexity Sciences).

Target here is to understand how to (which tools, which paradigms, methods) see complexity as Emerging Phenomenon and get the empowerment of such a view.

Synchronization

Tightly related to complex systems, synchronization is a very-nice-to-have feature in distributed environments.

It look good to the human eye (sync swimming), it is needed to make sense (sync video and voice). Wikipedia talks about process and data synchronization, I am mostly interest in latter: in changing environment how to have a coherent, unified and stable data set. This data set would constantly be morphing, inserting and removing elements, aggregation and federation within and with outside dataset would happen. By being able to understand how to manage such systems, I would feel muchmore comfortable dealing with complex systems.

Synchronization for me is an easier problem comparing to Complexity because of the bounded scope. Now I just need to get some good sources of info on how such problems are solved, apply in practice, discuss with experts and the knowledge will set.

Knowledge Management (KM)

I trust an assumption, that the better knowledge management is worth doing. What is “better knowledge management”? For myself I define it as more efficient KM in: adding new pieces of information, modifying and connecting (relations, tags, categories) previously collected knowledge, retrieving it (via browsing, searching, and following the links).

For me it seems if I would have very efficient knowledge management, by analytic skills would improve as well.

Would you agree?