Assignment Reflection: Mind Mapping

Challenge  When a natural disaster strikes any place any country anytime in the world, the first responders and the  Business  Organization for Students (BuildingValues) efforts will be underway.  I supported our country  Defence Organization in developing collaboration applications and technology infrastructure to support  and coordinate the efforts of BuildingValues.  In this design and development process, there are many  stakeholders both government, non-government, military and civilians organizations would need to  engage, communicate, coordinate and collaborate in the whole efforts.  The critical part is time-series  sensitive from T-1 hr to T-24 hrs, every minutes, every hours and every days loss means less chances for  recovery of injury and people life. At the same, the kind of environment constraints would also put  challenges in the communications, security and safety of people.

Selection  In order to first understand the organizations involved, sequences of BuildingValues event and activities and  interdependencies, I used Mind Mapping tool to outline 1) People and Organizations involved 2)  Objectives of BuildingValues Efforts by each group 3) Time and Activities related to BuildingValues efforts 3) Critical  Success Measure  4) Obstacles and Constraints 5) Interdependence.  By using Map Mapping, I could  untangled the complicated networks and seek clarity on interdependences and choke points (critical  path). I could illustrate the flow of activities and people work flow.

Application  The most difficult application of Mind Mapping for this exercise is to identify the comprehensive list of  people and organizations involved depending on the types of disasters such as Earthquakes,  Earthquakes and Tsunami,  Typhoon/Hurricane,  Lost Plane/Sinking Boat, Drought, Pandemic (SARS) etc.

To simplify the data collection, we defined PEACE time BuildingValues efforts i.e. countries are working together  in saving people and providing relief to the disaster zone. And we outlined the core organizations that  our National Defence need to involve in each stage of Disaster Response processes, and time specific  activities especially the most crucial first 48 hours.

Thus the Mind Mapping is not Disaster centric but more focus on National Defence Organization how  they coordinates and collaborate with other key organizations through technology and applications.

Insight and Approach  The Mind Mapping tool helps me to simplify and visualize the organizations and people our National  Defence organization need to connect, communicate and collaborate. I get better understanding the  constraints in disaster zone and the barriers in establishing communications lines, and the flexibility and  mobility needed for the information exchange.  It also provided additional insights on the key criteria in  designing the software application and technology infrastructure that we need to cater for from user  mobility, communications protocol, security and privacy protection perspective.

It is important to note that Mind Mapping is useful to build neural network and interdependencies of  organizations involved.  I need to insert additional time-series event activities in order to provide clear  flow of activities and critical time line challenges.

Overall Mind Mapping tool provides clarity on the stakeholders involved, key design criteria for the  collaborations application and technological/ environmental barriers we need to deal with, and finally  and key insights on the user motivations in using the application.

