Mind maps instead of bookmarks
Good Friday everyone.
I want to share one simple idea that we have adopted for research tasks.
Very often, especially at the architectural iteration, you need to do some research, or, more simply, * google *. For example, it is necessary to find out whether something is connected to something, and how, whether one supports something else, etc. Often the answer to a question does not look like a sure "Yes" or "No", there are certain conditions, possibilities for getting around problems, etc. The tasks for research are perhaps even more important and more critical than the implementation tasks. They influence the fundamental ideas and architectural decisions on which we build the System; and of course on the success of the project as a whole.
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Such tasks are obtained by experienced developers or “seniors” and it is often necessary to spend from 30 minutes to 2 hours only to present the results of the research at a rally. The problem is that during the study its performer makes certain decisions, and these decisions are as important as the conclusions made on the basis of the research. Sometimes it happens that the decision was not taken correctly, or some detail or chain of reasoning was missed. Often research is resumed to test additional ideas and options.
How did we do all this before? The researcher for a day, say, wandered around Web and read. He accumulated dozens of open tabs and browser windows, something he noted as a bookmark, something lost ... At the end of the day, he evaluated the progress, and, for example, decided that the study could be completed. Then he opened the editor and copied there some links, added a couple of sentences and went to the rally. At the same time, the chain of ideas and decisions that arose and were taken during the research disappeared. They had to be restored during the discussion.
What do we use now? Mind Maps (MM for short) or connection diagrams .
In part, this decision was facilitated by the presence of a large number of online tools for building MM. Here, for example, the result of researching the market for free online MM tools with the support of teamwork ( Wave Gadget for MM was used to record the research history)
As you can see, the mind42 tool was the winner of the competition .
What were our requirements for the MM tool during this study?
- the ability to add hyperlinks to MM branches;
- teamwork (sometimes research must be conducted by 2 people at the same time);
- democratic free account;
- the ability to set tags like "question", "yes" or "no" on a branch - this greatly increases the readability of MM.
Next, I will give an example using mind42 for a research task of determining the ability to migrate a finished Ruby-on-Rails application to Google App Engine .
The background of the problem is as follows. Some time ago we developed a web application on RoR. By the nature of the organization of the business, this was a startup, and it was financed by the customer himself, without * angels * and investors. We did our part of the work, we uploaded a web-app to the Panamanian ServerPronto hosting. Subsequently, the project did not reach self-sufficiency, but the customer did not want to throw it, because it had new ideas and the old service was going to make it a platform for further development after some time. Now the main thing - he wanted to transfer the application to Google App Engine. He just read about the new free hosting feature and asked us to explore the possibility of such a transfer and evaluate the budget of this operation.
For us, Google App Engine is a new platform and we started research. Results You can look at this public MM :
As you can see, the issue of migrating Ruby-on-Rails applications to GAE is not so simple. Moreover, as the research went on, the sign of the answer (yes-no) changed several times. In the final, it was decided to port the code supporting ActiveRecord to DataMapper and try to transfer the rest of the Ruby code without changes. The client has approved a budget. Now we are building a prototype in the architectural iteration to test the performance of JRuby-Rails-DataMapper-GAE.
It is also convenient to use such MMs for yourself - for example, while learning a new programming language or a new framework. Here, mind42 can also help, since it has the ability to attach Rich-text and pictures to branches. For example, MM may look like this for learning Ruby:
With this approach, MM in a sense, are a system of bookmarks "on steroids." And they have many advantages over browser or online bookmarks. If you have been interested in some topic for a long time, for example, launching a startup, then you can develop a detailed MM on this field with your own notes. Interestingly, such MMs are a valuable intellectual artifact and you can quickly transform it into, say, an interesting blog post. It is possible that soon we will see popular social services for the open collective creation of MM in different areas of specialization.
To summarize: the mind map has remained in the shadow of other collaborative tools for some time, for example, we used it only while writing detailed specifications. However, with the advent of online tools competing with each other, the following formula begins to work in relation to MM: Good concept + Good tools = Popularity.
Enjoy your branch!
I want to share one simple idea that we have adopted for research tasks.
Very often, especially at the architectural iteration, you need to do some research, or, more simply, * google *. For example, it is necessary to find out whether something is connected to something, and how, whether one supports something else, etc. Often the answer to a question does not look like a sure "Yes" or "No", there are certain conditions, possibilities for getting around problems, etc. The tasks for research are perhaps even more important and more critical than the implementation tasks. They influence the fundamental ideas and architectural decisions on which we build the System; and of course on the success of the project as a whole.
')
Such tasks are obtained by experienced developers or “seniors” and it is often necessary to spend from 30 minutes to 2 hours only to present the results of the research at a rally. The problem is that during the study its performer makes certain decisions, and these decisions are as important as the conclusions made on the basis of the research. Sometimes it happens that the decision was not taken correctly, or some detail or chain of reasoning was missed. Often research is resumed to test additional ideas and options.
How did we do all this before? The researcher for a day, say, wandered around Web and read. He accumulated dozens of open tabs and browser windows, something he noted as a bookmark, something lost ... At the end of the day, he evaluated the progress, and, for example, decided that the study could be completed. Then he opened the editor and copied there some links, added a couple of sentences and went to the rally. At the same time, the chain of ideas and decisions that arose and were taken during the research disappeared. They had to be restored during the discussion.
What do we use now? Mind Maps (MM for short) or connection diagrams .
In part, this decision was facilitated by the presence of a large number of online tools for building MM. Here, for example, the result of researching the market for free online MM tools with the support of teamwork ( Wave Gadget for MM was used to record the research history)
As you can see, the mind42 tool was the winner of the competition .
What were our requirements for the MM tool during this study?
- the ability to add hyperlinks to MM branches;
- teamwork (sometimes research must be conducted by 2 people at the same time);
- democratic free account;
- the ability to set tags like "question", "yes" or "no" on a branch - this greatly increases the readability of MM.
Next, I will give an example using mind42 for a research task of determining the ability to migrate a finished Ruby-on-Rails application to Google App Engine .
The background of the problem is as follows. Some time ago we developed a web application on RoR. By the nature of the organization of the business, this was a startup, and it was financed by the customer himself, without * angels * and investors. We did our part of the work, we uploaded a web-app to the Panamanian ServerPronto hosting. Subsequently, the project did not reach self-sufficiency, but the customer did not want to throw it, because it had new ideas and the old service was going to make it a platform for further development after some time. Now the main thing - he wanted to transfer the application to Google App Engine. He just read about the new free hosting feature and asked us to explore the possibility of such a transfer and evaluate the budget of this operation.
For us, Google App Engine is a new platform and we started research. Results You can look at this public MM :
As you can see, the issue of migrating Ruby-on-Rails applications to GAE is not so simple. Moreover, as the research went on, the sign of the answer (yes-no) changed several times. In the final, it was decided to port the code supporting ActiveRecord to DataMapper and try to transfer the rest of the Ruby code without changes. The client has approved a budget. Now we are building a prototype in the architectural iteration to test the performance of JRuby-Rails-DataMapper-GAE.
It is also convenient to use such MMs for yourself - for example, while learning a new programming language or a new framework. Here, mind42 can also help, since it has the ability to attach Rich-text and pictures to branches. For example, MM may look like this for learning Ruby:
With this approach, MM in a sense, are a system of bookmarks "on steroids." And they have many advantages over browser or online bookmarks. If you have been interested in some topic for a long time, for example, launching a startup, then you can develop a detailed MM on this field with your own notes. Interestingly, such MMs are a valuable intellectual artifact and you can quickly transform it into, say, an interesting blog post. It is possible that soon we will see popular social services for the open collective creation of MM in different areas of specialization.
To summarize: the mind map has remained in the shadow of other collaborative tools for some time, for example, we used it only while writing detailed specifications. However, with the advent of online tools competing with each other, the following formula begins to work in relation to MM: Good concept + Good tools = Popularity.
Enjoy your branch!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/83221/
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