The
Odessa Tools Collection — An Overview
A Software
Comparison/Review – February 2008 By Harry {doc} Babad
© 2008
Introduction
When asked by
Alexander Tyagulsky of Computer Systems [CS] whether I wanted to review, not the individual
software produced by his firm, but the set (not billed as a suite) in its
entirely, I hesitated a bit before accepting. The products, which are variants
of project management, mind mapping and visual outlining tools includes three
applications, which I briefly describe below. My initial concern was that the
staff of macCompanion had already very favorably reviewed two of the three
individual products.
So after a bit
of email dialog, I accepted the review task thinking that it would sever to
check several aspects of this three-product collection.
- What target
audience is the best suited to each of these products. They are This was
important because the “user of focus” is not specifically covered on the
CS Odessa website, not or side-by-side comparisons between their features
provided.
- Since
the three software packages were approximately the same price, and some
were available as both Pro and Standard versions. In both working with
them and reading about their features, they seemed to overlap in function.
Therefore I wondered whether there were advantages to owning more than one
product.
In my summaries
of these products, initially one at a time, I’ve done two things. First, I’ve
paraphrased (abstracted or modified) the publisher’s product descriptions to be
a bit less press release oriented.
Second, I in a
summary fashion evaluated these individual products based on an overall
assessment of the capabilities of the Odessa tool themselves, rather than redoing
three detailed in depth reviews. My remarks are based on both my own
experiences and the macC reviews of two of these three products. The
specifications for these individual products are tabulated at the end of this
article.
Finally at the
end of this review, I assess:
- What target
audience is the best suited to each of these products?
- Were
there were advantages to owning more than one product despite the only
modest reduction in price for purchasing a second product?
- Last
but not least, I share a potential use of the three tool sets provide by Alexander
Tyagulsky of Odessa; an analysis which I fully agree.
My thoughts
about these questions are detailed in the summary section of this review. Be
that as it may be — all three of these products are excellent choices for
both a beginning or advanced user of mindmapping, project management and a more
general concept diagramming software. In some ways these products are
comparable to Omni Group’s OmniGraffle and OmniPlan http://www.omnigroup.com or Mindjet’s MindManager http://www.mindjet.com/us/products/mindmanager_7_mac/?s=6 Which I’ve previously reviewed for macC.
Perhaps the Omni Group’s tools will be topics of future individual reviews. For
the present, the capability to integrate the outputs of the three Odessa tools
with each other and with other visualization and project applications makes
these tools well worth trying.
The Tools Themselves
ConceptDraw
Project 4.1
According to Wikipedia, “Project
management is the discipline of organizing and managing resources (e.g. people)
in a way that the project is completed within defined scope, quality, time and
cost constraints. A project is a temporary and one-time endeavor undertaken to
create a unique product or service, which brings about beneficial change or
added value.
“This
property of being a temporary and one-time undertaking contrasts with
processes, or operations, which are permanent or semi-permanent ongoing
functional work to create the same product or service over and over again. The
management of these two systems is often very different and requires varying
technical skills and philosophy, hence requiring the development of project
managements.
“The
first challenge of project management is to make sure that a project is
delivered within defined constraints. The second, more ambitious challenge is
the optimized allocation and integration of inputs needed to meet pre-defined
objectives. A project is a carefully defined set of activities that use resources (money, people,
materials, energy, space, provisions (logistics), communication, etc.) to meet
the pre-defined objectives.” Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Management
![](OdessaTools_files/image003.jpg)
Back to
ConceptDraw Project — ConceptDraw Project 4 project management software is designed to
efficiently plan and track a number of projects simultaneously and to
accurately allocate and manage any identified resource used in any and all of
the projects being managed. Project 4 represents project data in a clear visual
manner, displaying a color-coded representation of resource usage; as well as
highlighting any possible areas of resource misalignment for easy
identification. An easily accessible and convenient tabular project interface
provides quick navigation between projects. Across your projects, a variety of
different status views, make it easier to manage each individual project. For
senior management purposes, these views can serve the same functions across all
the projects in the manager’s portfolio. ConceptDraw Project 4 appears to be
effective tool for both beginner and experienced users.
Doc notes that
although he has been part of many projects in large corporate environment, he
has only personally organized and dealt with small projects at church,
community group or professional society associations. |
Odessa has designed
ConceptDraw Project [CDP] as a visual means to organize and manage projects
with clear, easy to read and follow industry standard Gantt, WBS (work breakdown structure)
charts and Mindmaps. It allows you to share your projects across Mac and
Windows platforms. ConceptDraw Project lets you monitor tasks and resources in
a project, using an easy to create and understand visual interface, quickly and
easily. It is, based on my assessments, a comprehensive and powerful tool for
project planning and resource management.
![cHRM chunklen 32 ignored:ASCII: ..z%....<breve><caron>..È..u0..Í`..:...oHEX: 00007A25000080830000F9FF000080E9000075300000EA6000003A980000176FvpAg chunklen 9 ignored:ASCII: ... .....HEX: 000003200000021400](OdessaTools_files/image004.jpg)
|
![](OdessaTools_files/image005.jpg)
|
A Generic Gantt Chart and WBS |
ConceptDraw Mindmapping Principal |
The
developer notes that, as described above, project management is a complicated
process of planning, organizing and controlling tasks and resources aimed at
achieving a definite goal. Usually in real life, such projects are also by
their nature usually limited in available time, resources or funding; there’s
never enough of these. Where ever a pinch point in a real project occurs,
milestones a missed, costs go up and proverbial hell breaks loose for both a
projects’ management and the clients oversight team.
"Any
technical problem can be overcome given enough time and money" - states Lerman's Law of Technology. The corollary adds,
"You are never given enough time or money.”
Lerman’s Law is not Listed in Wikipedia |
The CDP software
lets you determine all essential elements involved into project, control
resources and funds, and monitor projects progress in an easy to learn and use
way. CDP documents and methodology allows you to track execution phases, take
stock of resources and financial status, and create reports reflecting the
state of affairs in a project.
CDP’s
functionality helps you to:
- Define project
goals
- Subdivide the
project as a set of manageable tasks
- Assign appropriate
and necessary resources
- Identify and build
a appropriate team or teams to perform the project work
- Plan the work and
allocate the resources to the tasks and team members
- Monitor and
control the execution of you diagrammed projects
- Follow the
progress of project performance with comprehensive reports
- Input corrective
actions to update you project analyses
Previously
Reviewed: ConceptDraw
Project 3 version 3.4: A Professional Proactive Project Management Tool. Reviewed by Robert Pritchett. MacC
September 2007 [4.5 macC rating.]
http://www.maccompanion.com/macc/archives/September2007/Software/Project3.htm
ConceptDraw
MINDMAP 5.2.2 [CDM]
According to Wikipedia “A mind map is a
diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks or other items linked to and
arranged radially around a central key word idea or goal. It is used to generate, visualize,
structure and classify ideas, and as an aid in the study, organization, problem
solving, decision making, and in writing.”
“It
is an image-centered diagram that represents semantic or other connections
between portions of information. By presenting these connections in a radial,
non-linear graphical manner, it encourages a brainstorming approach to any
given organizational task, eliminating the hurdle of initially establishing an
intrinsically appropriate or relevant conceptual framework to work within.
A
mind map is similar to a semantic network or cognitive map but there are no
formal (methodology imposed)
restrictions on the kinds of links used.’
The
elements are arranged intuitively according to the importance of the concepts
and they are organized into groupings, branches, or areas. The uniform graphic
formulation of the semantic structure of information on the method of gathering
knowledge, may aid recall of existing memories.”
In
my analyses and testing I found ConceptDraw MINDMAP [CDMP] is a tool for
personal and small group brainstorming, mind mapping and visual thinking. [Now
I’ve checked Google and as far as I can tell these are all synonyms for an
overlapping concept. Using images and relationship arrows to connect concepts
or tasks. But a “Rose by any other name…” Although not so defined, the developers
web site implies that this product is aimed more at individuals and smaller
groups than for larger project management tasks.
Mindmapping
tools serve as your personal logic board or recorder when discussing ideas and their
relationship to each other. Such products support making decisions by cleanly
illustrating their supporting concepts. They also enhance the projects planning
process by graphically documenting your ideas.
CDMP
enables you to present information in a simple, visual way by building trees of
ideas or Mind Maps. The software to organize brainstorming sessions, take
notes, plan your work and then make presentations to your colleagues presenting
your ideas. In particular, the brainstorm mode helps you generate ideas and
then discuss them in a group by combining the software visual out put and your
own persuasive narrations. You were hit on the head when a wee person with a
bit of the blarney stone, weren’t you?
When
session is complete use Map view to discuss, edit, develop, remove or organize
your ideas, again merging images and textual content.
Areas where this tool can support
capturing and visualizing you thoughts include: Front-end project planning for
your church and non-profit group or in a small business environment. It is
especially powerful for capturing and distinguishing between concept
alternatives. Use it for supporting business presentations and illustrating
your ideas in the documentation you produce be it a report, pamphlet, a book or
an article for external publication.
Doc Sez, having previously reviewed
other mind mapping programs, and being comfortable with the genre and its
uses. This product, except for tracking menus and reading tool window details
posed no problems for me. Despite have not done a detailed formal review of
the product; I would certainly feel comfortable with a VIRTUAL macC rating of
4.0-4.5. |
![](OdessaTools_files/image007.png)
ConceptDraw
7.5
ConceptDraw is
designed, according to its publisher, for professional flowcharting,
diagramming and illustrating. Its flexible, handy tools help business and
technical users quickly document complex structures, systems and processes.
ConceptDraw 7 charts can be shared as a variety of graphics files and CAD
documents, printed pages, presentations and web pages. Owing to the advanced
libraries of pre-drawn shapes, ConceptDraw 7 is valuable tool for most of the
charting tasks including business, IT, project, UML (Unified Modeling Diagrams, and network diagrams.
A built-in
scripting language allows using ConceptDraw 7 to build enterprise-level
visualization solutions so all users can be working to the same information
(e.g., scrip or perhaps template).
Especially useful is the products ability to visualize/display resource usage
(people and critical tools), as well as the relationship between elements of
your “concept map or maps”.
The product
contains powerful vector drawing tools, graphics libraries with hundreds of
pre-drawn shapes, built-in scripting language support, support the import and
export of many file formats to assure exchange of information beyond Odessa
software users.
Previously
Reviewed: ConceptDraw 7.0.3 Professional, Reviewed by Robert Pritchett July
2007. http://www.maccompanion.com/macc/archives/July2007/Software/ConceptDraw%207%20Professional.htm
Comparisons
and Target User Audiences
You
do remember my questions?
- What
target audience is the best suited to each of these products?
- Were
there were advantages to owning more than one product despite the only
modest reduction in price for purchasing a second product?
Product
[1] |
Beginner
User |
Advanced
Users |
CD Project |
Perhaps
[2] |
Pro |
CD MindMap [3] |
Standard |
Partially
Contained in ConceptDraw |
ConceptDraw [CD] |
Perhaps
[4] |
Pro |
[1]
Odessa bundles it software as a business suite
[2]There
are enough tools in ConceptDraw that for casual project management efforts,
this product might suffice a casual user. However CD Project is definite
preferred for use by users who have recurrent, even is simple, project
management needs.
[3]
If the difference in cost is not a barrier, I recommend ConceptDraw over CD
MindMap, because of its richer feature set. However Mindmapping capabilities
are more limited and les intuitive in CD.
[4] According
to the developer, ConceptDraw 7 could not entirely substitute ConceptDraw
MINDMAP. One can certainly draw a mind map in CD 7 but it takes much more
time then accomplish the same task with CDM 5. Particularly, when it comes to business tasks
time is essential. |
Summary
Product Specifications
CS Odessa
LLC
http://www.conceptdraw.com [See Notes: 1-4] |
Tool |
Requirements |
ConceptDraw
Project 4.1 [Serious visually oriented project management tools] |
Mac OS X
version 10.4.0 or higher; Processor G3 (minimum) G4 for Leopard; 512 Mb of
RAM;
20 Mb of hard
drive space available.
Cost —
MRP $200 USD. PC Version Available. |
ConceptDraw MINDMAP Standard & Pro 5.2.2 [Mindmapping
and Support for Brainstorming] |
OS: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger CPU: G4 or
higher), Core Duo 1,6 GHz or higher. RAM:
512 Mb, HDD: 150 Mb.
Cost — Available in either a personal [MRP $119 USD] or a richer feature Pro edition [MRP $200 USD]. PC Versions
Available. |
ConceptDraw Pro 7.5 - [Business Graphics, Diagramming and Mindmapping] |
OS: Mac OS X (Leopard/Tiger)
CPU: G3 or higher, G4 for Tiger; RAM: 256 Mb; HDD: 500 MB.
Cost — MRP $249 USD]. PC Versions Available. |
GENERAL NOTES:
[1] A comparison of ConceptDraw MindMap
Standard and Pro product features can be found at http://conceptdraw.com/en/products/mindmap/provsstd.php
[2] All the
Odessa products can export to MS Office including the Windows version of
Project.
[3] All the Odessa products have good
to excellent built-in drawing tools and provide rich libraries of symbols.
[4] Street prices for these products
varied so greatly, as did the version being sold, that I could not in good
faith define a street price I trusted. However the academic prices from
Odessa are 50% of the MRP.] |
A
Corporate Use Example
Consider a manager in large project
oriented organization. He's got new project to develop and wants to complete it
in time and within budget. First he will need to prepare a brief task outline
with approximate durations for each task. This document serves as a framework
for further planning. The best tool to use for that task is ConceptDraw
MINDMAP. It can also serve to capture possible alternative tasks/routes and has
a memories function to capture non-mindmap items for future consideration.
The project
engineer, using brainstorming techniques, gathers all major tasks required to
define the project. Then in a mind map mode divide these broad tasks into smaller manageable subtasks.
In the process, the engineer adds visual information about the importance,
priority and duration of each subtask. As a result of this mapping activity he
has developed a top-level draft project-planning document.
During the
second sage of the panning work, the design engineer opens that document in ConceptDraw
Project and transforms the individual mapped items into a detailed
project-planning format including a work breakdown structure. This includes
defining task dependencies, milestones and resource requirements and
assignments. Later during he project’s implementation, this more detailed
information is used on every day basis to manage project progress.
In parallel
to the detailed planning activity, the project manager creates visual project
documentation presentation to company executives or stakeholders in
form of various simple charts. Such audiences don't usually want to see large
and detailed Gantt Charts, schematic or interface diagrams. Such visual project
overview reports can be produced with ConceptDraw 7.5.
Through all stages
of project development and implementation, the Odessa tools can be used to
capture and visualize the detailed project activities and tracking tools:
ConceptDraw
Project is primary used for managing tasks and people assignments.
ConceptDraw
MINDMAP at problem
solving brainstorming session, complex topics
analysis, decision making process, information management.
ConceptDraw 7 is used mainly used for preparing flow charts, org charts, WBS, UML and other
visual documentation depending on project type.
Try these tools
out, the demos are fully functional. You’ll like them; I did.