The last blog was about Basecamp and how I’ve enjoyed using it. This time around, I’ll focus on some of the key areas that I have found particualrly useful in conceptualising an idea.
One of the fundamental ways of working that I have embraced has been visual thinking. Well there are some alternatives to MS Visio and Concept Draw out there. First up, pen and paper – yes I’m a fan of Moleskine.
However, when the going gets digital there are a number of options. As I write this I am sat at my archaic Win 2k work laptop. At home, I have my gorgeous MacBook Air. I needed a solution that would cross the boundaries, indeed time travel in the case of this scenario.
My first activity was mindmapping, I used Mindomo, it was quick, easy and free. There are other solutions out there but for the purpose of creating a Buzan mindmap this worked perfectly. It also enabled me to work on my ideas when they came to me, rather than wait until I got home.
The next step was to rework my intial thoughts into something more robust that would lead to tangible outcomes. I found I needed this step, it prevented me from lurching into something that “seemed right at the time”. I transposed my intial thoughts into something more robust, for this I used mindmanger for the mac. (if I didn’t already have the this software I would look to use something like XMind.) Take a look at Xmind, there’s a Win version a Mac version and a version you can run from a USB stick. oh, and it’s free.
Having rationalised the intial brain dump, I found that tasks, actions, events call them what you will, started falling out of the high level plan and I simply updated the milestones and to-dos in my basecamp. Simple really.
There you have it, how to go from zero to a basic project plan using free software…more or less.
