For project planning, documentation and work breakdown purposes I started using MindManager from MindJet back in 2009. I really like it’s overall features and the connection to Office software. When starting a project I always start with a general layout of the main topics and project highlevel goals or milestones that need to be achieved in order to complete the project and it’s documentation. The software allows me to add all project topics and elements in a structured manner and it’s easy to add or modify things within the project map.
A feature I really use a lot is the “notes feature”. This allows you to describe a topic in detail and together with the topic duration input field I can generate a full Word document that contains the topic’s estimated time of completion, it’s progess, stakeholders and a full description or report about it, it generates the Word document headings based on the map’s structure. Great stuff and pretty usefull! And it mostly looks similar to this:
By entering startdates, expected duration and relations between topics you are able to generate a Ghantt chart overview of the project, which can be very useful to determine project bottlenecks and other potential risks. Besides using it for project management, control and documentation you can also use it for Getting Things Done and all sorts of other purposes as you can find on the Maps for that! site.
Another great option is to implement MindManager in a business environment in order for people to share maps and collaborate within a map, by adding documents, ideas their own personal maps. Especially suited for Microsoft business environments to use in combination with the Office suite.