Note: I use Mindjet’s MindManager for Mind Mapping. There are other options out there, but I’ve been very happy with MindManager. — Ruven Gotz

Introduction

Last week I introduced the use of Mind Mapping for SharePoint projects. In this week’s installment, I’ll show how the use of a mind mapping tool can reduce the time and effort that it takes to design your site’s navigation.

Navigational Taxonomy

The first order of business is to deal with the definition of “Navigational Taxonomy”. If I were to do that formally this article would be a LOT longer. So, I’m going to rely on your own intuition and experience as web users and I’ll just informally define Navigational Taxonomy as the structure of a site that you can access by clicking menu links. For a more complete definition, take a look at this free chapter from “Unlocking Knowledge Assets” on Microsoft’s site: http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/sampchap/5516a.aspx.

Designing the navigation of your SharePoint site is a task that can be difficult and drawn-out. There are often competing visions of how the site should look and political pressures from managers who want to ensure that their place in the hierarchy is as prominent as possible. By default, there is often a temptation to have the structure of the site mirror the structure of the org-chart. This may seem easy at first, but will cause problems in the long run.

Case Study

Eli Robillard, tells the story of a government office where a new employee was looking for instructions on how to get a parking pass. Because the intranet was organized by department, she searched the HR and Building Management sites and couldn’t think of where else to look. It turned out that parking passes were controlled by the Finance department because parking fees were deducted from each employee’s pay.

If you follow the existing org chart, your users will have trouble finding what they are looking for and, if there is a corporate re-org, you will have to change your navigation, which is hard on everyone. (See figure below)

The solution is to create an “Employee Center” (or “Centre” for Brits and Canadians), where staff can go to get everything they need: From parking passes to benefits details. You can especially help new employees to become productive much more quickly by giving them a special place in the Employee Center that links to all the forms and information that they need to get started at your company.

Design Navigation Structures as a Mind Map

So, where does Mind Mapping fit in? I have found that building the navigation interactively, in front of the team can shorten the design cycle substantially. If you normally do this by drawing on the whiteboard or flip charts, any change is permanent (e.g. erasing or crossing out) and when you do make a change, it can be hard to get back to where you were if you change your mind. The permanence of the change discourages experimentation.

With MindManager, when moving an element you can ask: “How does that look” and get the response (“Great”, or often: “No, that just doesn’t look right”) immediately. This feedback loop lets you resolve many of the thorny issues in a very short time.

For example, in the map above, it was quickly pointed out that parking passes are not a benefit because staff has to pay for them. So we instantly moved it to the “Policies” area of the map. There was no erasing or reconnecting involved, it was a simple drag-and-drop operation (see below).

To increase your chances of success, it is best to have all the stakeholders in the room at the same time. If this is impossible due to geographic or other constraints, a Mind Mapping tool allows you to include everyone via a screen sharing session – a solution that is much easier to set up than a video conference.

Conclusion

It is very difficult to accurately convey the speed and power of working with MindManager during a workshop with a client. In this article I have explained how it beats the often-used whiteboard or flipchart. (I’ve also dropped a few hints about what not to do when building your navigational taxonomy, but more details will have to wait for another series of articles).

Next week, I will cover how I have used MindManager for running requirements brainstorming workshops and also how to use it for solving complex project prioritization tasks.

Author: Ruven Gotz

Ruven Gotz is a senior consultant with Ideaca, a Microsoft Gold Partner based in Toronto. For the past five years he has been focused on delivering award-winning SharePoint solutions (most recently, a Microsoft Impact Award for Information Worker Solution of the Year, 2008).

Ruven’s blog is at http://spinsiders.com/ruveng and you can follow him at http://twitter.com/ruveng.