Merlin Project Manager for MacOS X

Do you have difficulty explaining the goals of projects to your staff? Is it difficult to get their buy-in to the project? Have you ever had one of those "projects from hell" where important tasks were missed out, or there were insufficient allowances made for the risk factors? Do you ever try bringing new staff on to a project which is underway, and have great difficulty in getting them to understand the big picture of what the project goals are?

These problems are often very costly, in terms of time, money and your reputation. Just about every project manager has faced these issues at some time in their career, so you are not alone!

We have a totally unique and very powerful solution to these (and many other) project management problems. It is not just one program, but the combination of two programs working together to provide the ultimate in project setup and management.

	The Programs - NovaMind and Merlin
	NovaMind gives you the best of Mind Mapping, visual planning and communication. Merlin gives you the best of project, risk and issue management. The combination of NovaMind and Merlin brings a powerful extra dimension to project management, allowing much improved planning, staff buy-in and involvement in the whole process. One of the tenets of project management is the increasing cost of errors or omissions in the plans at each stage of the project. By starting the project with brain storming and Mind Mapping, project scoping is clearly defined early on, problems are resolved during the planning process, and the team is able to have input into identifying issues before they cost you a lot of time and money. Couple NovaMind and Merlin with the resources of the Apple iPhoto, Address Book, and iCal applications, and you have a very powerful solution for the whole of the project from inception to delivery. We have been working with the Merlin team since March 2004 to bring you this solution, and now have the ability to both import a NovaMind document into Merlin and to export a project from Merlin into NovaMind format. Both NovaMind and Merlin are built around the same principle of being simple for beginners but efficient and powerful for experts.

	How the programs work together				Special Pricing
	NovaMind is used during the initial stages of the project to brainstorm the project goals and potential solutions. This provides a powerful way for the staff involved in planning the project to work together, building a definition of the problem that will be solved by the project. You use the graphics libraries, iPhoto, other images, and color and shape to enhance the Mind Map, making it clear to everyone what ideas are related to each other, and the importance of the tasks. From this you build a Mind Map with all the major tasks and their subtasks identified on branches of the Mind Map, again using visual representations to identify task relationships and building clarity. Everyone understands clearly the goals and tasks involved in the project because they can see how everything fits together visually. To sell the project to management and customers, the Mind Maps can be shown in NovaMind or quickly exported to a Powerpoint or Keynote presentation. For documentation for management, the outline of the project can be quickly incorporated into an MS Word document.				Special Bundle Pricing We have special bundle pricing when you purchase NovaMind and Merlin in a single order. Offer is not available when the products are purchased separately. Volume Licensing Volume pricing for Merlin and NovaMind licenses is available at our online store, and will automatically be applied to your purchase. Educational Discounts Available NovaMind and Merlin have negotiated a 30% discount for students, educators and educational faculties. To apply for a discount coupon (which must be obtained BEFORE purchase) here to apply for the discount coupon. Discounts cannot be applied after the purchase has been processed. Discounts apply to both NovaMind and Merlin purchases, and network and multiple licenses, with the exception of Merlin upgrade licenses. We will then process your application and provided the information is legitimate, you will receive by return email a coupon number that you must use at the time of purchase.

	How to create your Merlin Project from your NovaMind Mind Map
	Once the tasks have been outlined, the Mind Map is imported into Merlin, where the specific timelines, dependencies, and risk factors are formally identified, and the actual running of the project is controlled. Simply drag in or import your Mind Map to start a new project based on your Mind Map information. You will notice that following the initial import, all the activities are aligned at the left of the timeline as if they all started at once, unless you defined start dates for specific activities. To quickly turn this into a project plan that you can start seriously working with, select all the resources (Command+A) and link them finish to start (Control_Command_L). Resources are either added manually or dragged in from the MacOS X Address Book, and timelines and schedules can be exported to iCal calendars for individual time management. If you need to generate a Mind Map from your project, you can export your project to a NovaMind Mind Map at any time from the Merlin export menu. When a new staff member is assigned to the project, the Mind Maps gets them up to speed with the overall project goals very quickly, by giving them both a picture of the project goals and the issues that were faced during the mapping out of the project, and how they were solved, as well as a graphical overview of the tasks, how they relate to each other, and their importance and impact. They can then be quickly introduced to their individual role in the project and see why they are being asked to do those tasks, and what the impact to the rest of the project is.

	Sharing your Projects with Merlin Web Sharing
	With the Web Sharing module, you can publish your project file over the web either as a live HTML document so you can collaborate with other users over the web or as a static HTML page that you can share with the team. This feature opens the door for all users who wish to use Merlin but can't because they are tied to an operating system other than Mac OS X. By publishing your Merlin project file using Merlin application and its Web Module add on, you can allow any user to access the project and collaborate with you on it only using their web browser. Here is a project that has been shared using Web Sharing - as you can see, it has just about all the features of Merlin available to the whole team on the web.

Merlin Features include

• Both import and export NovaMind files.
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  Attach elements to an activity or to the project., a quick and easy way to include additional information about deadlines, risks, checklists, problems and documents for project records.
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  Drag and drop addresses from the Address Book or MS Entourage and drag them into your project, or use the full resource editor to edit your staff and other resources.
• Choose different data views including activities (Bar / Gantt charts), Net Plan diagram, Resources view, or Utilization.
• Element based project items giving you total flexibility about what is included with each task. Elements can contain Events, Files, Information, Issues, Risks and Checklists. All elements can be attached to activities so you have all the relevant resources in one place.
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  Use the Merlin Library to drag and drop iterations and phases or other reusable components into your project. This saves you massive amounts of time when doing similar projects to ones you have completed before, and also dramatically reduces the risks because you are using proven templates.
• Different layout views to help you work, choose from Gantt, Outline, Columns or Report.
• Context sensitive inspector with all the relevant information at your fingertips, whether you are dealing with activities or elements at the time.
• Automatic coloring of tasks according to status.
• Additional information for Resources and Planning Conflicts.
• Drag and drop of project resources onto activities.
• Pre-built project templates for quick creation of new projects.
• Customization of template information for your particular project, including dates, budgets, objectives, defaults for working days and times, and phases.
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  Merlin is the only Mac OS X application to provide risk management calculation and tracking for your project.
• Merlin will automatically calculate costs assigned to resources.
• Include any project problems as individual tasks for easy monitoring and follow through until resolved.
• Dates and times of your project tasks can be copied to a dedicated project calendar. You can also synchronize with your Palm, at Mac.com or iPod.
• Special Information Elements for quick and easy collection of historical information from earlier projects. See exactly what your planned costs and times were, and the actuals of the project. You can see the risks that were identified at the time and the actual events that happened, and the impact of those events on the project schedule, resource usage and costs. You also have the ability to record the sources of the information, what kind of information, any actions arising from the information recorded so far, and any relevant comments.
• Ability to include a Project Charter as part of the project, documenting what the project is about, the desired end results and measurements of success, the assumptions and restrictions under which the project will be executed, the authorities of the project manager and involvement of project stakeholders.
• Identification of the status of documents - whether they are new, draft, in revision, ready for technical checking, ready for legal checking, ready for client checking, declined or approved.
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  Manage resouce utilization and resource conflicts in an easy graphical format where you can see any issues at a glance.
• Identification of different roles, including Clients, Stakeholders, Project Leads, Project Managers, Task Managers, Developers, Technicians, Marketing, Sales, Support staff, Team Members, Temporary staff, and Consultants.
• Flexible cost assignments with standard and overtime rates, global costs for the entire project, and costs per assignment.
• Ability to set default resource utilization for resources who may be working on several projects at once.
• Ability to collapse activities to get a higer level overview of work packages.
• Built-in version management of supporting documents so you have a history of changes to project planning and requirements etc.
• Netplan visualization using Activity-on-Node layout with arrows showing dependencies.
• Simplified netplans by collapsing of activities.
• Activity work and duration settings, start and end date settings like asap, precise dates etc for resource leveling. Utilization of resources on the activity, results, priorities, status, full calendar features, and precedence of activities.
• Budgeting and cost estimation, on an activity level for fine-tuning of financial management. This includes budget requests, approvals, partial budget approvals, and planned vs actual costs.
• Automatic critical path calculation and display.
• Full risk management including global, business, employee, financial, and technique risks.
• Identification of risk management stragegies, descriptions, and types of impact including scope changes, cost impact, and deadline impact. Also the likelihood of the risk happening, and the planned actions to take in those cases.
• Ability to budget reserve amounts to cover for risks.
• Scenario testing for dealing with activity slippage, and views that show the actual vs planned times.
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  Complete reporting capabilities to make it easy to understand the status of the project.
• Reporting of the objectives, milestones, upcoming activities, overdue activities, deadlines, information, issues, resources, and files.
• Reporting of next due activities.
• Reporting of milestones and trends.
• Review dates report.
• Export your project information to the internet with a simple mouse click.
• Enhancement of the Lessons Learned phase of project wrap-up, with the closing of risks and recording of impact
• 
Export to multiple formats:
• Import and export in MPX format (compatible with MS Project)
• Localized into English, German, French, Italian and Spanish.

System Requirements

Apple Macintosh running OS 10.4.5 or later

What support does my Merlin license include?

Purchase of a Merlin license includes ongoing support while using the recommended operating systems and a recent version of Merlin. Merlin support is provided through Project Wizards, the makers of Merlin and can be contacted by email at en-support@merlin2.net. NovaMind Support is provided through NovaMind, the makers of NovaMind and can be contacted by email at support@novamind.com.

Merlin minor releases (i.e. v2.x.x to v2.x.x) are free upgrades and major releases (i.e. v2.x.x to v3.x.x) are paid upgrades.

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