Mind Mapping, an excellent planning tool

Do you ever come up with a lot of ideas and brainstorm for a while but find you never actually write anything down? A few days later you’re left trying to remember all those cool ideas you had but have started to forget. Often if I do actually write something down, it’s in a text file or bulleted in a word document. The problem with this is that I have so many text files and documents that they are difficult to find or aren’t in the format that’s just simple or conveys the thought process clear enough.

One method I have found very useful as of late is Mind Mapping. Whenever I have heard this being mentioned or even thought about doing it, I’m always left asking myself ‘where do I even begin?’. The simple answer to that is to actually ‘begin’. The next question is, what tools exist that are great for creating mind maps? Well it didn’t take much Googling to find a few, but one in particular that got my attention within minutes (don’t you love it when you know software is going to be awesome within the first few minutes?) is Bubbl.us.

Bubbl.us is an online, collaborative Mind Mapping tool that is simple and very easy to use. The creation of mind maps was effortless and it really felt that my ideas were flowing and being displayed as I thought of them. Although you can sign up to Bubbl.us for free, it only allows you to save a maximum of 3 sheets. You can export to JPG and PNG though but these can’t be edited at a later date. If you do find this really useful then the subscription options are very reasonable.

I have also found that Mind Mapping is very useful as an initial ‘thought process’ for my projects. Not only am I able to initially plot my thinking but visually seeing these ideas/processes has allowed me to quickly identify flaws and correct accordinly with little fuss. They’re also great when presenting ideas/plans to management or members of your team.

Here is mind map I created recently that helped me better think about the requirements for a new backup strategy to be deployed in our production environment.

In the diagram you can see the central point being the title of the project ‘Backup Strategy’ and then branching out to the categories of data (mysql databases, mail and web site content). Each of these branches also have child branches that detail the actual ‘data’ to be backed up, such as the database name, directory, etc. A third child branch is used to detail the actual software or scripts that will be used to perform the backup followed by a final 4th that details the backup schedules or (offsite media).

Bubbl.us also allows online collaboration so you can easily share your maps with other users and work on them together.

There are probably a lot of other uses (such as creating road maps) you could find for these and I’d be very interested to see what other people do with their mind maps. I’ll also most likely post some additional maps in the future.