Setting up a project plan

These are the typical steps you should follow when setting up, building, managing and revising a project plan.

(optional) Start by brainstorming all the tasks that make up your project plan in one of the standard Mind Mapping views (Mind Map, Top Down or Left/Right), using the Task/Timeline panel to enter preliminary task data.

Define the project settings, such as its start date, end date and scheduling mode. For more information, see "Defining the global project settings".

(optional) Define the project calendar. You may be able to bypass this step if you have already set up appropriate calendar defaults. See "Defining calendars" for more information.

(optional) Create the global resources list. Although MindView lets you define the resources as you need them, it is usually quicker to start by setting up a global resources list from which you can then select resources to assign to the various project tasks. See "Assigning resources" for details.

Enter or edit task names and durations. See "Entering and editing tasks".

Assign resources to tasks. See "Assigning resources".

Create links to specify the dependencies between the project tasks. See "Using links".

Set constraints on the tasks as necessary. See "Using constraints".

Make final adjustments to the project plan. See "Enhancing a project plan".

Once the project has actually started, inspect it at regular intervals to detect potential problems or scheduling conflicts and make any corrections required. See "Reviewing a project plan".

(optional) If you need to expand your project plan further, you can easily export it to Microsoft Project to take advantage of the advanced project management capabilities of this application.

For more information, see "Exporting to Microsoft Project".

You can also create various HTML reports from your project plan, export it to Microsoft Outlook as a series of tasks or export it in XML format. For more information, see "Creating project reports" and "Exporting a project plan".