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Do you have difficulty explaining the goals of projects to your staff? Is it difficult to get their buy-in to the project? Have you ever had one of those "projects from hell" where important tasks were missed out, or there were insufficient allowances made for the risk factors? Do you ever try bringing new staff on to a project which is underway, and have great difficulty in getting them to understand the big picture of what the project goals are?
These problems are often very costly, in terms of time, money and your reputation. Just about every project manager has faced these issues at some time in their career, so you are not alone!
We have a totally unique and very powerful solution to these (and many other) project management problems. It is not just one program, but the combination of two programs working together to provide the ultimate in project setup and management.
Merlin 2 is the leading professional project management software for Mac OS X. Developed by project managers for project managers, Merlin truly delivers in meeting your professional requirements.
Merlin is recognized globally not only by its customers but with numerous industry awards. Merlin stands apart as the most professional tool for projects of all kinds on the Apple Macintosh.
The Programs – NovaMind and Merlin
NovaMind gives you the best of Mind Mapping, visual planning and communication. Merlin gives you the best of project, risk and issue management.
The combination of NovaMind and Merlin brings a powerful extra dimension to project management, allowing much improved planning, staff buy-in and involvement in the whole process. One of the tenets of project management is the increasing cost of errors or omissions in the plans at each stage of the project. By starting the project with brain storming and Mind Mapping, project scoping is clearly defined early on, problems are resolved during the planning process, and the team is able to have input into identifying issues before they cost you a lot of time and money.
Couple NovaMind and Merlin with the resources of the Apple iPhoto, Address Book, and iCal applications, and you have a very powerful solution for the whole of the project from inception to delivery.
We have been working with the Merlin team since March 2004 to bring you this solution, and now have the ability to both import a NovaMind document into Merlin and to export a project from Merlin into NovaMind format. Both NovaMind and Merlin are built around the same principle of being simple for beginners but efficient and powerful for experts.
If you purchase multiple copies of Merlin, they can collaborate on up to 2 projects – if you need to collaborate on an unlimited number of projects, you will need a Merlin Server license too.
Mind Maps
NovaMind is used during the initial stages of the project to brainstorm the project goals and potential solutions. This provides a powerful way for the staff involved in planning the project to work together, building a definition of the problem that will be solved by the project. You use the media library, iPhoto, other images, and color and shape to enhance the Mind Map, making it clear to everyone what ideas are related to each other, and the importance of the tasks.
From this you build a Mind Map with all the major tasks and their subtasks identified on topics on the Mind Map, again using visual representations to identify task relationships and building clarity.
Everyone understands clearly the goals and tasks involved in the project because they can see how everything fits together visually.
Brainstorm with your colleagues and capture information as a MindMap. Whether you are using NovaMind, you can quickly and easily take the results of your brainstorming sessions and open it in Merlin as the basis for creating the initial structure of your project.
MS Project
Beginning with MS Project 98 and up through MS Project 2011, Merlin understands the MS Project file format. Merlin can read MPP, XML or MPX files and write to XML or MPX formats if necessary. This helps pave the way free of obstacles to easily collaborate with those using Microsoft Office Project on Windows.
Elements
Elements represent one of the most compelling and unique features in Merlin. Elements allow you to attach key data and information to individual activities, milestones, and projects. Take advantage of the six different types of Elements that Merlin provides to integrate into your project plans. Elements helps ensure that all key data, documents, and information is readily available and optimally organized to help you retain control of your projects. Elements also offer a rich layer of knowledge by offering version control, allowing you to trace the history of changes made to critical information during the course of a project.
Merlin Tutorial Video
Merlin Quick Start Guide
Want to learn more? The Merlin QuickStart Guide provides a simple, step-by-step overview to help you get quickly on your way with Merlin.
Download the Merlin QuickStart Guide (PDF).
How to create your Merlin Project from your NovaMind Mind Map
Once the tasks have been outlined, the Mind Map is imported into Merlin, where the specific timelines, dependencies, and risk factors are formally identified, and the actual running of the project is controlled. Simply drag in or import your Mind Map to start a new project based on your Mind Map information.
You will notice that following the initial import, all the activities are aligned at the left of the timeline as if they all started at once, unless you defined start dates for specific activities. To quickly turn this into a project plan that you can start seriously working with, select all the resources (Command+A) and link them finish to start (Control+Command+L). Resources are either added manually or dragged in from the MacOS X Address Book, and timelines and schedules can be exported to iCal calendars for individual time management.
If you need to generate a Mind Map from your project, you can export your project to a NovaMind Mind Map at any time from the Merlin export menu.
When a new staff member is assigned to the project, the Mind Maps gets them up to speed with the overall project goals very quickly, by giving them both a picture of the project goals and the issues that were faced during the mapping out of the project, and how they were solved, as well as a graphical overview of the tasks, how they relate to each other, and their importance and impact. They can then be quickly introduced to their individual role in the project and see why they are being asked to do those tasks, and what the impact to the rest of the project is.
