Project Management Elements MindMap

Published on Mar 14th, 2011 by Bert

What is required to practice successful project management? What are the elements of good project management? Every once in a while I look back and reflect on what I know about project management and what I’ve seen work.

An integral part of this, is putting down my mental model and there’s no better way to do that than with a mindmap. I’m glad to share this exercise here with you. Feel free to use or share the mindmap however you like but please give credit and link back to this page. I’m offering the full mindmap in several formats.

The mindmap is split up in 3 rough parts, I’ll explain.

The elements on one side have bearing with governance, the ways the company or the PMO works.

Good project starting-conditions include setting a baseline and a business case that’s supported by whoever is sponsoring.

Good project closure-conditions include proper hand-over, archival and strategical reflection.

On the other side of the full diagram are the elements that are the closest to the project manager; what the PM has the most control over. The numbers are an indication of sequence but that’s not to say that there are no iterations. This is especially true for the concept, the execution and the planning elements.

Check out the full Project Management Mindmap in a clickable HTML image map.

Download the mindmap in different formats (right click, save as … to download):
Project Management Mindmap in PDF
Project Management Mindmap in PNG (full size 1193 x 833px)
Project Management Mindmap in JPEG (full size 1193 x 833px)
Project Management Mindmap in FreeMind format (the mindmap source file)

For the mm format get FreeMind, help for the hard of thinking.

This PM mindmap is based on my current mental model of project management. I focused on context, conditions, pm tools and processes while making it, but I did not go in to the soft-skill side of things. That’s for another mindmap.

There’s no such thing as a finished brainstorm, so what do you think? Am I missing something essential? Did you find any surprises?

Please have your say in the comments!