Conceptual Modeling using MindManager

Domain Knowledge

In business analysis, domain knowledge - Technology, Stakeholders & Processes is a key to success. It consists of the jargon, people, processes and any other related pieces of supplementary information that are interconnected. In case of cross-enterprise initiatives, which involve multiple lines of business or products, domain knowledge can be a bit challenging. Applying the concept of cross-enterprise to application support or enhancement, acquiring and updating domain knowledge can get ‘real’ challenging. Consider moving to a new organization and supporting a cross-enterprise application - Not only does one need to get up to speed and learn but also keep track of all the changes that are happening simultaneously. This is no ordinary task.

Let me explain. In one of my recent engagements as part of the enterprise cross-functional team I was involved in the ecommerce platform support (Bugs, Updates) and enhancement (New Features and Improvements). The platform was custom built and enhanced over a decade and half and involved the entire ecommerce workflow from acquisition, conversion, provisioning, fulfillment and activation and automatic renewal involving Websites, Desktop Applications, Self-service portals, Mac/Microsoft Stores and numerous other supporting pieces such as APIs, CDNs and CI/CD. It’s functioning was hugely instrumental in the work of multiple products, teams, businesses, and most importantly affected roadmaps - unlike a typical Development Process involving UI/UX, Developers, QA where there is one or more application(s) to support and responsibilities are fairly easy to divide. 

Requirements Prioritization

Being in charge of requirement prioritization, my job was to quickly Understand the requirements, Check what systems and processes got impacted, Ascertain it’s priority - Immediate Development or Backlog, Determine who is responsible and how to proceed i.e. what steps to take next. I knew that organizing information visually through modeling was the key to success. First I tried to divide and conquer using the traditional approach of Org. Charts, Entity Relationship Diagrams and Flow Charts. The problem with this approach I found quickly was that I would often find myself wading through the three models separately to find out what got or would get impacted in a change - especially when all I wanted to know was the Systems/Stakeholders impact rather than the detailed list of steps which could be easily ascertained once the above was determined.

For example, When I come across a requirement, I want to Search an important keyword within the requirement. This should show me the related

1. Main Entity
2. Related Associations/Connections
3. People
   

 

MindManager

This is where I found an idea/concept mapping tool called MindManager very helpful. I tried the popular modeling tool Microsoft Visio Professional Plus, but there was a big limitation - The inability to search by Keyword (even within a drop-down list) that made me go in favor of MindManager. Mindmanager organizes information using Topics, Connections and Properties. It is a fairly simple drag, drop and edit interface which allows pretty much anything on it - Consider a Notepad combined with Paint along with the data and models available in Excel. There are numerous other buttons, icons, images include advanced search capabilities that can vastly enhance the conceptual model. I think I just scratched the surface here in terms of MindManager's capabilities. 

MindManager Screenshots with some linked entities (concepts)

Concept and associated Keywords

 

Concept and a flow chart