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Mind Mapping Tool

Challenge & Selection

I work in a large technology company. We’re looking for a new Training Management tool instead of the  existing tool which currently does not meet the organization’s needs. The tool involves many  stakeholders from different groups and functions.

Over the past year, many complaints have been made regarding the current tools issues (bugs), and  mainly lack of compliance to today’s training requirements. People are not happy with the current  solution, and hope for a better one as soon as possible. We need to address the needs of the trainees,  their managers, content managers and information system personnel. Another business requirement is  business intelligence, or analysis of the data.

I think a mind mapping exercise would bring together the different requirements, expectations,  experiences, pains and needs of the various populations which use the tool. We need to address both  the frontend and backend business processes. Leading such a journey where all participants define their  needs, and share with others, would help improve the design of the new system and provide a more  wholesome business solution.

Application

I will create a list of people of each stakeholder group:

  Employees (Trainees)

  Managers of trainees

  Content managers (connect experts who define the courses/tasks)

  Executives (managers who pull the data and need to get insights about progress, problem areas  etc.)

  Information system professionals (developers, project managers, quality assurance, integrators)

I will conduct a session to explain all stakeholders, what is required from them in the mapping (analysis)  process. I would show an example of a mapping of another process/system, so the mapping concept and  exercise is clear, but people are not “fixed” (limited to) on the exact items in the sample.

Then, I will schedule a session (~3 hours), where each group meets and internally goes over each  participant’s mappings. For example: all the content managers meet, and go over each mapping. The  deliverable of this session is to create 1 map of all the agreed items all the content managers think may  be relevant (they don’t have to agree on everything. Items would be discussed later with the other  teams). The IT professionals meet as a separate group, and provide a map of their own.

The next step would be to create mixed groups, where each participant “advocates” for the needs and  views of his base group. The final step is when all groups meet in one room and conduct a discussion

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about all the inputs and insights which were revealed in the prior meetings. The deliverable is a set of  high-level requirements which encompasses and supports all major needs of all stakeholder groups.

Insight & Approach

The process which brings all stakeholders together to a discussion, where issues and new ideas surface,  is crucial to the success of any large scale project (software or not). Sharing information, understanding  others’ point of views and needs are a must. Sharing information visually is a powerful tool and is  intuitive and easy to grasp. Marking clearly the different entities, different flows of information,  different needs of showing/collecting/analyzing the data is very helpful for every stakeholder to  understand his/her own needs, and their relationships to the needs of other stakeholders, which them  may not even be aware of. (For example, the way the data is defined in the database would make it easy  or difficult to pull later for analysis purposes).

In terms of improvement in the future, a possible variation of the process would be to shorten it, by  skipping the 2nd step where all stakeholders of the same domain meet. The main step would now only  be mixed groups (one person from each stakeholder group). This method might result in more openness  to ideas and concepts of others, instead of arriving ready with strong positions after completing the  meeting of each stakeholder group separately.

*Example of Mind Mapping from the Coursera course

