CS Odessa Announces Support of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, Ahead of the Pack.

CS Odessa, the leading provider of business productivity and visualization software solutions for both the Macintosh and PC, has recently announced that all of the current versions of their ConceptDraw productivity software product line now fully supports the Apple Macintosh OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard.

This is a no charge update available for all CS Odessa customers who have the current shipping versions of any of the ConceptDraw products. Customers who currently have previous versions of the ConceptDraw products can upgrade to their products to the latest release for a nominal charge.

Oleg Bocharnikov, Head of Product Management Department for CS Odessa, commented, “Snow Leopard is extremely important to Apple and their customers. Therefore it was important for us to get this right. With Snow Leopard shipping earlier than we had anticipated, we were absolutely focused on achieving platform support as quickly as possible.”

Yuriy Varbanets, Product Manager for ConceptDraw MINDMAP, also added, “Our Development and QA team worked inexorably to ready our support of Snow Leopard. We invite anyone who may still be waiting for a Snow Leopard supported application to trial our available solutions. We have 30-day, no obligation trials that enable users to really get to know the products completely before purchasing. Our focus on great customer value has been winning us many friends over the last 12 months.”

Resource Management Using ConceptDraw PROJECT

ConceptDraw PROJECT makes it easy to change and adapt project calendars

Management of people resources in any project is a titanic task. As your team grows it is difficult to track all of your resources and their availability. With a growing number of resources the likelihood that all members of your team will be working 8 to 5, five days a week is a flight of the imagination. The product management solution you select needs to be flexible enough to accommodate whatever your project schedule is. Maybe your team for a project adopts 6 day work weeks during a critical project period, or maybe there is an individual who is only available for 4 days a week. Or your team works 10 hours a day 4 days a week during a project phase. No matter what your teams’ schedules or individuals’ schedules are, your project management solution needs to flex matching the resources you have available. Without this flexibility your projects will veer from their planned trajectories quickly, and projects that exhibit this behavior are seldom successful.

ConceptDraw PROJECT has the ability to maintain calendars that reflect the schedule of an overall project, a team and its availability for projects, or the work schedule of an individual. In the screen image you can see that the calendar that is associated with Tom S and how it has been modified from a standard schedule. Tom is available for work on a Sunday, but he will not be available on the 16 through the 19th. Once the calendar has been selected it is easy to make the necessary changes to Tom’s days and even the hours he can work. You can see that Tom’s calendar has been changed to show that he is available on the 12th. Once his calendar has been changed, you can then see on the Gantt chart, in the background, that a task assigned to Tom now starts on Sunday the 12th. Unless you made the change in Tom’s availability in his calendar, you could not have scheduled him to work on a Sunday.

ConceptDraw PROJECT has incredible flexibility that adapts to how you and your organization work. This plasticity in project workflow, improves the efficiency of you and your team. Efficient use of resources is critical in maintaining your projects on their planned path to successful completion.

ConceptDraw PRO Has An Easy and Powerful Export to HTML

If you are looking to produce custom professional business graphics in HTML format, look no further then ConceptDraw PRO. With ConceptDraw PRO one can easily export a single page or multipage document with just a few clicks of a button. Above is an example of a 3 page test document that was exported using the HTML export wizard that is available in ConceptDraw PRO. The template selected of the export automatically adds a header which displays the name of the file as well as placing navigation buttons, making it easy to move to any page in the document. The page thumbnail images on the left of the main viewing area in the above example indicates the page being viewed, by selecting a different thumbnail image the new image is then displayed in the main viewing area. The page being viewed and its relation to other pages in the document can be easily identified in the column of thumbnail images on the left, a visual display indicator indicates the page selected. It is straightforward for anyone of any skill level to generate professional graphics in HTML format when using ConceptDraw PRO.

ConceptDraw PRO comes with many templates that span a wide variety of subject areas from flow charting to room layout, also included with ConceptDraw PRO is an extensive image library that is easy to use and modify. ConceptDraw PRO is a powerful solution that is right for your business and personal needs.

Business is all about Accomplishment. ConceptDraw Office is all about Business.

To accomplish something, is to bring about a desired result. The individual components of accomplishment can be broken down as either tactical or strategic. Tactical is often viewed as small-scale actions that contribute to a larger purpose, while strategic accomplishment is more focused on the integrated planned effect of a company. Strategy comes in many shapes; likewise there can be varying levels of impact. The one given is that attaining a successful strategy is critical to any business.

A Strategic Accomplish Map can be used for keeping your strategy visible at all times. This example [http://www.mindmappedia.com/?id=121847551] may be used as a template. A company’s strategic plan must be broken down to department and individual levels. If this is not done, the company’s strategy may never be effective, as participants will not understand their roles.

“If the building blocks are clearly defined, the essence of even the most complex strategy can be expressed on one page.” ----An excerpt from, Execution. The Discipline of Getting Things Done.

At CS Odessa our version of this quote is:
“If the building blocks are clearly defined, the essence of even the most complex strategy can be expressed on ONE MIND MAP. “

Mapping Strategy Implementation
Many times strategy, after the initial planning stage, is elusive in its identification and implementation. Mind mapping is a great starting point to sort through this, as many of our customers use ConceptDraw Office to assist them in attaining their goals.

ConceptDraw Office is a business solution that combines business productivity methods and data visualization with project management technologies. There is no other product on the market equipped enough to enable one to observe and analyze accomplishment processes inside and out. ConceptDraw Office makes it a snap to plan, develop, manage, and document quality processes. ConceptDraw Office is comprised of ConceptDraw MINDMAP, ConceptDraw PROJECT, and ConceptDraw PRO and is packaged as one seamless software tool kit.

ConceptDraw MINDMAP
ConceptDraw MINDMAP is an excellent tool to record observations and development of goals. Moving from observation stage to early process development is as easy as dragging-and-dropping items or objects that can be used to structure a process and then immediately assign resources.

ConceptDraw PROJECT
With a single push of a button, all observations and task information are automatically moved over from ConceptDraw MINDMAP to ConceptDraw PROJECT. From a project vantage point it is then easy to manage all the resources available to you and ensure proper management of all the processes put into place.

ConceptDraw PRO
ConceptDraw PRO is a professional business graphics and drawing tool that is an integral part of ConceptDraw Office. ConceptDraw PRO is well known for its ability to produce eye popping business graphics and flow charts in professional formats, and to build score card documents that report on project status.Plan, Do, CommunicateConceptDraw Office is a proven and powerful software solution that can assist you in the common challenges you are faced with when working towards accomplishing your company’s defined goals.

Works Cited
Bossidy, Larry, Ram Charan, and Charles Burck. Execution The Discipline of Getting Things Done. New York: Crown Business, 2002.
Hunger, J. David, and Tom Wheelen. Essentials of Strategic Management (4th Edition). Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2006.

ConceptDraw Office’s Role in Quality Improvement

When planning for your next product roll out, there are a number of well-known variables that impact how well a product is received. Superior product quality is a proven contributor to market success as it has a positive impact on how customers perceive the value of the products they purchase. Many companies take their product standards so seriously, that they publicize them to consumers to influence their purchase behavior.

Exceptional quality also has a great impact on the user experience and encourages word-of-mouth advertising for product offerings. In addition, achieving superior quality standards has a positive impact on increasing customer retention. Excellence in product quality is important for both the retail and business-to-business markets. Quality can be used as a strategy by companies to build effective competitive barriers to market entry.

Six Sigma Role in Quality
One way to measure quality, is to calculate the number of defects over a given sample size. A methodology that is widely used to reduce the number of defects, thereby improving and maintaining quality, is Six Sigma. Six Sigma is a quality process that specifies the number of defects in a product cannot exceed 3.4 defects per million. This is a quality goal that many companies, from commercial bakers to computer chip manufacturers, strive to attain. Reducing the number of defects to 3.4 per million or less does not happen by chance or luck, and requires proper planning and discipline to keep the number of defects to appropriate levels.

Six Sigma provides a number of tools that are used to reduce variability in an organization’s business processes. There are two common methodologies used in Six Sigma which are used in different situations depending on if the process under review currently exists or is a new process being developed.

Define, Measure, Analyze, and Improve Control (DMAIC) is a Six Sigma method used for examining existing processes that fail to meet desired quality specifications. Define, Measure, Analyze, Design and Verify (DMADV) is a Six Sigma method used to ensure that proper levels of quality are built into the product and development processes from the very start.

Many of our customers use CS Odessa’s ConceptDraw Office to assist in their Six Sigma implementation. ConceptDraw Office is a unique business software solution that combines business productivity methods and data visualization with project management technologies. It is well adapted to support both DMAAIC and DMADV methodologies. There is no other software product on the market as well equipped to enable one to observe and analyze quality processes inside and out. ConceptDraw Office makes it a snap to plan, develop, manage, and document quality processes.

ConceptDraw Office is comprised of ConceptDraw MINDMAP, ConceptDraw PROJECT, and ConceptDraw PRO and packaged into one seamless software tool kit.

ConceptDraw MINDMAP
ConceptDraw MINDMAP is an excellent tool to enable the recording of observations and development of inclusive quality processes. If you have multiple processes to observe, ConceptDraw MINDMAP has the unique ability to capture all of those processes, each on with their own respective page, in a multi-page master mind map. Moving from observation to early process development is as easy as dragging-and-dropping items or objects that can be used to structure a process and then immediately assign resources.

ConceptDraw PROJECT
With a single push of a button, all observations and task information are automatically moved over from ConceptDraw MINDMAP to ConceptDraw PROJECT (you can also convert data to Microsoft Project). From a project vantage point it is easy to manage all the resources available to you and ensure proper management of all the processes put into place. With ConceptDraw PROJECT all your projects are available in a single view, which is critical when you have a common pool of resources that are utilized and managed across all ongoing projects. The built-in powerful reporting functionality keeps all project participants on track to ensure objectives and goals are met.

From ConceptDraw PROJECT, a number of visual scoreboard project reports can be opened in ConceptDraw PRO, a professional business graphics tool.

ConceptDraw PRO
ConceptDraw PRO is a professional business graphics and drawing tool that is an integral part of ConceptDraw Office. ConceptDraw PRO is well known for its ability to produce eye popping business graphics and flow charts, in professional formats.

Plan, Do, Communicate
ConceptDraw Office is a proven and powerful software solution that can assist you in the common challenges you are faced with when working towards meeting quality measurement and process definition goals.

Macworld Awards 2009

Macworld UK recently asked their editors and readers to select Macintosh supported products that they felt were best of class. On June 19, 2009 Macworld announced that in our first year of competing, CS Odessa’s ConceptDraw MINDMAP was nominated for best “Education product of the year” and “Best software”. Congratulations to the winners of “Macworld awards” 2009.

ConceptDraw MINDMAP for Projects

Quick video demo of ConceptDraw MINDMAP for Projects

How many times does something start out as simple and easy to use, but then get more complicated overtime with additional information and updates? Many mind mapping tools have a mix of user focused capabilities, which typically focus on brainstorming, organization, process development and then some tack on a set of features that attempt to address project management. This can cause a simple mind mapping program to get complicated for the general mind mapping audience.

The CS Odessa solution to this Gordian Knot dilemma of the need to balance powerful project functionality with simplicity, is addressed in our latest product offering, ConceptDraw MINDMAP for Projects. We have tightly integrated our ConceptDraw MINDMAP and ConceptDraw PROJECT applications into a compelling and economical solution.

There are many benefits of ConceptDraw MINDMAP for Projects

• Same functionality and file structure for both Macintosh and PC.



• Common file format between ConceptDraw MINDMAP and ConceptDraw PROJECT so information is kept up to date automatically in each program.



• Better suitability for tasks at hand, as tasks are segregated to the most appropriate application.



• ConceptDraw PROJECT can import and export Microsoft Project files in XML file format.



• Tight integration between ConceptDraw MINDMAP and ConceptDraw PROJECT simplifies workflow and improves task efficiency.



• Ability to manage multiple projects in a single view, using a common pool of resources
  There are many more advantages, but I think you get the gist from the above list. All of this power at an incredible price!
  
  To find out more please visit us at http://www.conceptdraw.com.