The trouble with projects, more so than ever before, is that they entail managing huge amounts of information with any number of different people involved, who each use a variety of different formats to supply that information.
This can hinder the running of a successful project, as goals and objectives can be confused or lost, different platforms encourage ineffective collaboration, and it is difficult to take a holistic view of project progress.
In managing vast amounts of data it is easy to be overwhelmed.
Chris Harman is regional VP of Mindjet.
Gartner states that 90% of businesses suffer from information overload1. In addition, research recently conducted by One Poll, a provider of collaborative work management solutions, found that employees across Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands specifically are drowning in droplets rather than floods of data at work, and are struggling to navigate, organise and digest this collectively, which is costing businesses.
The study highlights that, while workers from the three countries might receive small amounts of data, when it comes from multiple sources it quickly becomes hard to manage, negatively impacting the business bottom line and making workers unhappy.
Clarity of vision
To successfully tackle this surplus of information, project managers have to find new methods of bringing project data together in a way that allows everyone to see the project structure, key processes, resources and timelines more clearly.
Finding this new, better way of working, however, is not a one-size-fits-all approach since projects vary greatly. The solution, therefore, needs to be capable of bringing together the various formats and datasets into one common platform - enabling all parties to easily view, update and collaborate with the information in real-time.
Everyone involved in a project needs to be on the same page working towards the same end goal. It may sound simple, but research by the Standish Group has shown that over 80% of projects are unsuccessful2, either because they are over budget or late, or a combination of both.
The problem arises from the vast amounts of information companies have to deal with on a daily basis. It is very easy to record this in an unstructured way, but this makes it difficult to effectively share with others on a project team, because they too have worked in their own unstructured way.
The quality of project delivery will correlate directly with the level of detail and information that can be integrated and built into the plan from the outset, and that is constantly referred to and updated. The problem is data on scope of work, stakeholder expectations, project ideas and timelines, cost breakdowns and resource demands will often reside in many locations and in many formats.
Unite and conquer
For example, if a member of the senior leadership team is running a takeover bid, he or she may find the accountants involved prefer to view the numbers on spreadsheets, but the legal team examines and draws up contracts in Word or PDF, and the marketing department delivers presentations using PowerPoint. Without a unifying system that can accommodate all of these formats, there is every chance that information will be lost during the time-consuming marrying up of platforms, and in managing these vast amounts of data it is easy to be overwhelmed.
Being able to aggregate this disparate information and documentation is thus key to project success, but without the right solution in place, this is an almost impossible task. This is because it is often difficult to organise information in a manner that enables project managers to get an overview of the project and clearly see the necessary connections and relationships between them, while still having easy access to the necessary detail, which can result in an inability to accurately predict costs, foresee potential risk factors and take a truly holistic view of project requirements.
Visualisation of information is an answer to the information overload challenge and can help drive the success of a project as well as improve an organisation's bottom line.
The use of visual representations of information, related to a concept, project or idea, is increasingly being seen as a vital tool in improving processes at all levels of an organisation.
Most existing information platforms offer the user a means of interacting with these in a linear manner from left to right and from top to bottom. However, several pieces of research3 into the science of the mind explain that this can be ineffective, as people often scan the page as a whole, rather than digesting the detail.
What the mind responds to better is information presented in a radial, graphical or non-linear way, or a combination of these forms. As a means to visualise the complexity of a project, this approach is perfect and allows project managers and their teams to clearly get an overview of the bigger picture, while easily being able to delve into the required project detail. In fact, this type of solution has been proven to improve project management efficiency by 25% and increase individual productivity by up to 17%4.
1 Gartner, “Gartner Says 90 Percent of Businesses Suffer from Information Overload,” May, 2002
2 Standish Group, Chaos Study, 2000
3 Novak, J. (1998), Learning, creating and using knowledge. Concept maps as facilitative tools in schools and corporations; Rico, G.R. (1983), Writing the natural way. Using Right-Brain Techniques to release your expressive powers; Shone, R. (1984), Creative Visualization.
4 (2012) Data digest research conducted for Mindjet by Mindlab International.
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