DecisionMill plug-in for MindManager helps you to evaluate ideas more effectively

By Chuck Frey

Many people, once they have generated a list of ideas, use gut feel or intuition to select the best solution for their needs. Sometimes that approach works, while other times, it may fail miserably -- because you may not have stopped to objectively consider the reasoning behind your decision-making process.

DecisionMill, a useful plug-in for MindManager 2002, X5 and X5 Pro developed by MindManuals.com Limited, helps you to evaluate each idea or option systematically and objectively. You can first brainstorm ideas or options in MindMananger, and then use DecisionMill to evaluate them based on criteria that you set up for that project. DecisionMill is ideal for ranking ideas or options based on how well they meet your objectives. It's also a great tool for exploring, understanding and refining the criteria you use to make your decisions.

How does DecisionMill work?

Using DecisionMill with MindManager is a 5-step process. We'll take a brief look at each step, to help you better understand how you can use this excellent idea-evaluation tool.

Step 1: Set DecisionMill options

First, you create a new MindManager map and start up the DecisionMill plug-in, accessible from the Actions menu of MindManager. DecisionMill appears as a dialog box, and first asks you to configure the options it should use for the current map. These options include:

• Storing weights and scores in the topic resources, in the topic categories or as callout topics,
• Allocating score ranges automatically or defining them manually, and
• Turning on or off the ability to write an evaluation report within the notes of each idea you evaluate with DecisionMill.

Once you have saved your DecisionMill settings for the current map, the program window closes, and you are returned to your current MindManager map.

Step 2: Add ideas that you want to evaluate

You can use DecisionMill's easy-to-follow wizard to add the options or ideas you want to evaluate to your mind map, or you can add them manually. If you decide to enter them manually, you need to add a light bulb (idea) symbol to each idea; DecisionMill looks for this icon when deciding which elements of your mind map it should evaluate, and which it should ignore.

DecisionMill is a very intelligent plug-in: if you haven't entered any ideas for evaluation, it automatically prompts you, and displays the proper dialog box boxes to enable you to do so.

Step 3: Add your decision-making criteria or questions

Next, you run DecisionMill again to add the evaluation criteria or questions for your map. Each question can be weighted, because some criteria may be more important to you than others. DecisionMill allows you to mimic the way your mind works, assigning different levels of importance to each decision-making criterion.

Step 4: Add answers and values for criteria questions

After you have formulated your list of decision-making criteria and their relative weights, DecisionMill prompts you to type in answers for each criterion, and assign scores to each answer -- positive numbers for something that is advantageous, zero for an option that is neutral, and negative numbers for answers that are disadvantageous. When it evaluates ideas, DecisionMill multiplies the numerical value of each answer by the value of that question in order to arrive at a weighted score for each idea you're evaluating.

By assigning larger positive or negative numbers to these scales, you can weight some answers more heavily than others. If you want to designate certain attributes as "must-have" or "must-avoid," you would give them large positive or negative values, respectively.

You can also adjust these values after you have evaluated your ideas, to see how different values affects the scores for each idea. In this way, you can refine your decision-making criteria in an iterative fashion.

You can build these "criteria trees" manually, or you can use DecisionMill's helpful Wizard walk you through the process. The Wizard is ideal for first-time users; while the ability to build a "tree" of criteria and scores by hand will appeal to experienced users as well.

Step 5: Have DecisionMill calculate the weighted value of each idea

Once your questions and answers are complete, you run DecisionMill once more to calculate the weighted value of each idea. The program displays the ideas you're evaluating one by one, and asks you to select the answer to each question that most closely matches your opinion. DecisionMill then calculates the numerical value of each option, based on the criteria and answer values, and displays the results in your mind map. It also places number icons next to each idea to designate the first choice option, second choice, etc.

I like the fact that you can change question and answer weights directly in your mind map. After running three sample ideas through the process, I discovered that they all scored equally, so I edited the weights of the answers to one of my evaluation questions. When I re-ran DecisionMill, it recognized that had made these changes and asked me if I wanted it to recalculate the scores for my ideas. When I clicked yes, DecisionMill immediately did so, and displayed the updated scores in my mind map. Very impressive!

Learning to use DecisionMill

With many programs, it's tempting to jump right in and start playing with them, and then refer to the manual later. DecisionMill is not once of those programs. This doesn't mean it's a hard program to use; rather it's a reflection of how it interacts with MindManager.

At first, I thought it was somewhat disconcerting that I had to run DecisionMill multiple times in order to enter ideas, criteria and weights, and then to evaluate my ideas, returning to my MindManager map between each step. But once I worked my way through the well-written tutorials and tried an evaluation process on my own, it all made sense why DecisionMill operates the way it does.

In fact, the more I used DecisionMill, the more impressed I became with its innate "intelligence." Each time you run DecisionMill during the idea evaluation process, the program tells you what the next step is, asks your permission to walk you through the process and then does so, simply and clearly. It does a great job of "knowing" which steps you've competed, and suggesting the next step in the process.

Conclusion

If you're planning to use MindManager as a tool for generating and evaluating ideas, then I highly recommend DecisionMill, to help you add structure and consistency to the process of evaluating them. DecisionMill is a well-designed program that is both easy to use and powerful, and integrates well with MindManager – including the new X5 and X5 Pro versions.

DecisionMill for MindManager costs USD$45, and can be purchased from the MindManuals Web site. You can also download a trial version and see for yourself how this well-designed plug-in can help you to streamline your idea evaluation process.

Published on 1/5/2004

Rating:
Summary If you use MindManager to generate ideas, then DecisionMill is a must-have. Its idea evaluation capabilities can save you hours of time, and can help you to generate better decisions.
Learn more about DecisionMill

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