Something interesting for those involved in Project Management (part 1)

 Visual Project Maps for PRINCE2 - a Mindjet MindManager 8 add-in

PRojects IN Controlled Environments 2 (PRINCE2) is a project management methodology. It was developed by a UK government agency and is used extensively within the UK government as the defacto project management standard for its public projects. The methodology encompasses the management, control and organization of a project. PRINCE2 is also used to refer to the training and accreditation of authorized practitioners of the methodology who must undertake accredited qualifications to obtain certification.

PRINCE2© Support with World’s Favourite PRINCE2 Product (Freeware)

Community Edition is used by over 80,000 users worldwide and is provided on CD to training delegates by ten PRINCE2 ATOs and on a number of degree and masters courses, it is widely recognised as the best product to support PRINCE2 learning and is used extensively by people training in PRINCE2 and to support the delivery of personal PRINCE2 projects, providing users with a full set of the official PRINCE2 templates.

CE manages the configuration of these templates and any other documentation you add with checkout and in capability keeping a clear audit trail of changes.  The P2 resource pack also provides access to the official P2 Glossary and other high value P2 supporting materials. It also provides this for DSDM Atern the agile method, PMBOK, a sales support method and a set of generic project management methods for your less complex projects, based on best practice and saving you tailoring time. If you want to do more with CE you can upgrade to add Managing Successful Programs and there are more methods coming soon. CE also has a multi-language capability so you can create a translation file and operate in your language of choice. CE is no dead end either, when you are ready for more sophistication you can upgrade into Personal Edition easily.

Now Community Edition comes prepackaged with Planner the great new planning tool easy to use and delivering the features used most commonly in MS Project it makes creating your plans straightforward. Regularly updated CE now provides newly extended 3 and 5 step generic PM methods pre-scaled for less complex methods, based on best practice and including plans, risk and issue management, all for free. With Community Edition you can take your projects with you as the software is a .NET portable application. This means that you can load it on to a USB stick and move around between computers taking your project environment with you.  Of course if you want to do a conventional install to program files on your PC or laptop you can do that as well.  If you are a Mac user all is not lost as you can run Community Edition on Parallels.

Download your free copy from: http://www.projectinabox.org.uk/community.asp

Visual Project Maps for PRINCE2

Visual Project Maps for PRINCE2 has been developed to provide a visual project management interface specifically designed for users of the P2 project management methodology. By using a visual interface to represent project information and presenting project information within a the process framework, Visual Project Maps enables the project team members, from novice to qualified practitioners, a flexible and intuitive environment within which to manage projects of all shapes and sizes. The Visual Project Maps solution lies within code that has been developed and compiled into the MindManager application to combine the two into one.

Whatever your level of P2 knowledge, Visual Project Maps can give you the competitive advantage in today's complex and ever changing world of Project Management.

The main website for the makers of Visual Project Maps seems to be down (defunct): http://www.vtsdirect.com/index.html

However a trial copy for MindManager 8 may be downloaded (in English or German) here: http://www.spirit-education.de/S_Download_VPM.htm

Keep on Mooo-dling, and MindManaging

          

Tom