Infinity Maps - Mastering complex projects by using knowledge maps

Scattered amounts of data, a high density of information and organisational effort as well as constant time pressure are among the greatest challenges of project management. Against this background, always maintaining an overview of the available and necessary knowledge is often crucial for the success of a project. This is because discussing complex issues and developing solutions for them requires effective and efficient knowledge management. Selecting the right tool for this purpose, which flexibly adapts to the individual working method, can decisively facilitate project handling.
Logo of infinity maps and a sample screen of the software.
The Karlsruhe-based IT start-up Infinity Maps has developed a solution for this: Infinity Maps is tailored to the needs of knowledge workers such as consultants or managers who must process a lot of information quickly, present complex processes clearly and present results convincingly. The software creates large, zoomable knowledge maps.

Methodical knowledge management

Like many start-ups, Infinity Maps was born out of the desire to solve a personal problem. The software is based on the iMapping method of co-founder Dr Heiko Haller, who developed it during his university studies and has now been using it for years in his work as a management consultant.
The experience of not being able to work with common applications such as mind maps, whiteboards and note apps in the way that his own work requires inspired him to design a novel method. Infinity Maps was conceived with cognitive processes in mind and is based on years of research into visual information organisation as well as experience from everyday work. As a result, the software not only offers intuitive operation, but also supports creativity, agility, and networked thinking. These are all factors that contribute to the solution of complex tasks that project managers have to deal with.

Orientation and transparency during the onboarding process

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Click on the image to enlarge it
When consultants enter a new project environment, the first hurdle is not necessarily the complexity of the issue. Often it is already challenging to gain orientation within the company. Simple organisational charts often cannot adequately depict the networked reality between internal and external stakeholders. Infinity Maps, with its simple basic principles of clear hierarchies and relationships, makes it possible to create individual stakeholder maps.
In contrast to other applications, content can be staggered in layers. In addition, any connections can be drawn and hidden or shown as needed. Instead of an impenetrable web, users thus create clearly structured knowledge maps even with large amounts of data. By using the stakeholder map described above, project managers get an overview and can always keep an eye on interrelationships during the course of the project.

Map your projects from start to finish!

While such knowledge maps can be valuable reminders especially during orientation, many use cases of knowledge maps run from the start to the end of a project. Infinity Maps covers the whole range from notepad to presentation medium and also serves well as a thinking tool in analysis phases. It is particularly useful that all phases are displayed and processed in one application and one common overview without media discontinuity.
It can be helpful to already "file" the first acquaintance: key points on goals and clients' problems are noted loosely and sorted in the follow-up. Especially at the beginning, loose notes make it easier to find ideas; in this phase Infinity Maps can be used like a mind map. As a starting point for the concept, however, these must be enriched with content, sorted, and linked. It is often only during this process that it becomes clear which structure is best suited for strategy development. Infinity Maps offers full flexibility for this, allowing everything to be worked out in detail in one place, continuously supplemented or restructured and clearly prepared without changing tools. The agenda for a workshop, for example, can thus grow into a dense concept and finally into transparent project documentation. It does not matter how complex or extensive the content is. Infinity Maps can hold thousands of pieces of information and can be expanded indefinitely, with effortless and fast navigation always guaranteed. This makes it possible to manage even multiple projects in a single map.

Multi-projects organised in a single map

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Click on the image to enlarge it
Multi-project management in particular confronts project managers with the challenge of combining and prioritising information from different companies, systems or areas, visualising and coordinating dependencies, identifying synergies and making them fruitful. Problems often result from a lack of overview of all projects and incomplete documentation. All relevant project information must be always available as a basis for decision-making in order to act quickly and communicate comprehensibly. A central platform for knowledge transfer minimises the risk of duplication of work in companies, but also contributes to optimising the personal knowledge management of project managers.
Zooming in on specific projects allows them to be focused on individually, while at the same time drawing insights from parallel projects. Templates can reduce the effort for recurring use cases. Templates for master data, free areas for notes, business model canvases and much more make structuring easier and still offer enough freedom for special cases and individual approaches.

Complement and reduce the toolkit at the same time

Within the heterogeneous landscape of productivity and organisational tools, Infinity Maps complements the toolkit of project managers with its focus on knowledge transfer. It is the different all-in-one solution that does not address time management and planning, but focuses on complexity. This makes Infinity Maps the smart alternative to mind maps, concept maps, whiteboards and wikis, which quickly reach their limits when dealing with large amounts of information, nested topics and contexts. The extensive, zoomable knowledge maps offer a unique combination of details and overview.

Get an idea of the tool!


Authors:

Dr. Heiko Haller is Co-Founder and Chief Product Manager of Infinity Maps GmbH. He is driving product development to support knowledge workers with a tool for tackling the big problems of our time.

Felicitas Hilge is Junior Marketing Manager at Infinity Maps and enjoys writing about knowledge management for students and open source projects.

Key words: Project management, PM Software, Projekt planning, Tip

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