Non-Business Use

Reflection - Mind Mapping

Challenge

I'm a senior member of an engineering team that manages the development of oil reservoirs. Based on upper  management direction, we commenced a technical study aiming to firm development plans for an undeveloped oil  reservoir. Members of the team collaborated and exerted tremendous efforts to develop an optimized development  plan. However, while presenting the plan to upper management using the conventional presentation methods, the plan  was viewed as too complex with many details drawing a lot of questions. Moreover, due to the nature of oil & gas  industry, development plans take several years to be executed and they are rarely carried out as forecasted. Numerous  variables force changes such as oil & gas prices volatility, global conflicts and economic downturns. I was tasked to  lead the team to develop an innovative method to present development plans to upper management. Moreover, the  demonstration manner should automatically showcase the latest plans in place and thus eliminates the need for manual  updates.

Selection

As mentioned, the team had few presentations delivered and the performance was deemed unsatisfactory. Thus, we  implemented mind mapping tool to resolve this challenge. The tool is suitable to come up with an innovative illustration  of the development. The team focused on trying to view the development from management prospective and

Application

Capitalizing on virtual meetings, the team held interactive sessions focused on the mission in hand. As engineers are  details-oriented, the first session focused on viewing the development plan from management prospective. The majority  of the session was spent by breaking down components of the plan and placing the parts on a selection board. Next,  the pieces of information in hand were rated individually according to the significance and relevance. After that, the  scores were compiled and the information were clustered accordingly. Subsequently, several elements were viewed  as insignificant to management and thus omitted from the selection board. After completing the clustering exercise, the  team spent the rest of the session discussing several new ideas on how to demonstrate the plans in a logical and easy  to follow way. Immersive visualization techniques were deemed necessary to clearly illustrate the plans and avoid any  confusion. Meanwhile, automating the data feed to the platform was also crucial to ensure sustainability and seamless  updates.

Insight

After applying the mind mapping tool, the team acquired a much needed clarity on the way forward. The scope of the  illustration was properly defined and thus enabled members to focus on execution. Arguments on what to show and  what not to show were replaced by how to and members collaborated effectively to develop the innovative platform.

Approach

The course was much needed to tackle problems such as the described above. As engineers, we are familiar with  technical problems where solutions are developed by equations and calculations. Meanwhile, design thinking is a  powerful tool to tackle such challenges and enable myself and team members to systematically overcome.

