Picture Perfect Projects

Successful project management requires much more than a to-do list. You must plan, execute and continuously improve your project management processes to meet project and strategic goals.

All of these management activities require the interaction of multiple entities: goals, tasks, issues, schedules, resources, approvals and on. How do you keep it all in perspective?

Visualization to the rescue!
Visualization improves all facets of project management. It helps creative thinking and strategic planning, makes progress tracking and issue identification easier, and improves communications through greater visibility of metrics.

Still, what are the keys to successful project management? And how do Business Graphics support them?

Planning, Scheduling, Tracking and applying Feedback are critical to project management success.

Download the white paper for more details and examples.

Planning
Great projects start with the right goals. But the right project goals depend on the bigger picture. How do you make sure the project goals align with strategic goals? Visualize them! Mind maps, and decision trees are great visual aids for planning.

Next, you must scope out tasks, dependencies and resource demands to meet those goals. You'll need timelines, Gantt charts, project team charts and activity charts (PERT charts).

Scheduling
With the planning in place, the project can be scheduled. Desired completion times must be balanced with the availability of resources¾people, equipment, and other resources.

Project team charts, authority matrices and Gantt charts enable the visualization of scheduling.

And SmartDraw 2008 lets you turn your mind map into a Gantt chart, simplifying the transition from planning to scheduling.

Execution and tracking
Keeping a project on schedule requires diligent tracking - timelines, activity charts and Gantt charts are most useful here.

We're done. How'd we do?
At the end of a project, it is always best to analyze performance and issues to make the process better next time. From flowcharts to cause and effect diagrams, you can see what worked, what did not and how to improve.

Project Management Success through Visualization
Successful projects result from successful project management. And visualization through business graphics can help you plan for-and deliver-success!

Download the white paper for more details and examples.

Make Interactive Business Graphics with SmartDraw and MapsAlive®.
You can turn any SmartDraw business graphic into an interactive presentation with MapsAlive. Bring your diagrams, floor plans, charts and maps to life on your web pages.

A visitor on your web site can mouse over parts of an interactive business graphic to instantly see photos and text appear - without even clicking. For example, mouse over the boxes on a Project Team Chart to quickly see photos and responsibilities for each team member. Click a box to drill-down into another interactive graphic showing details for that part of the project.

If you can create it with SmartDraw, you can make it interactive with MapsAlive.

Click here to learn about MapsAlive and see interactive SmartDraw examples.