Anyone create a map for HOA Governing Documents hierarchy?
Discussion Open
I'm new to MindManager and am looking for a starting point for showing how our hierarchy of Home Owners Association (HOA) governing documents are interrelated.
The lowest levels are the HOA Rules, Regulations and Resolutions, next level are our Bylaws, then Articles of Incorporation, then CC&Rs, then Recorded Plat, and on up to Laws and Statutes having the highest authority. We are a residential HOA in Texas, so that would be ideal, but I'm sure I can generalize from even a condo association map in another state.
Any help getting off to a good start is appreciated.
Thanks
Bruce
Hello Bruce
I don't know anything about HOA documents, but the starting point for any map is the same: who will use it, and what will they use it for? Establishing this first will help with the design. People usually navigate information resources with a specific goal in mind.
Even with a single hierarchy of documents in the map, you can use tags to index the documents in many different ways to help find relevant information. You can also use relationships between them to highlight important flows or interdependencies.
Another way to approach it might be to not model the documents themselves, but model the primary use cases or processes for using them. Assuming that the documents are hosted elsewhere, you can have multiple outbound links to the same document from different places in the map, reflecting different user needs.
Hello Bruce
I don't know anything about HOA documents, but the starting point for any map is the same: who will use it, and what will they use it for? Establishing this first will help with the design. People usually navigate information resources with a specific goal in mind.
Even with a single hierarchy of documents in the map, you can use tags to index the documents in many different ways to help find relevant information. You can also use relationships between them to highlight important flows or interdependencies.
Another way to approach it might be to not model the documents themselves, but model the primary use cases or processes for using them. Assuming that the documents are hosted elsewhere, you can have multiple outbound links to the same document from different places in the map, reflecting different user needs.
Thanks Nick,
Two use cases:
1) Provide training material for potential future Board candidates to help them understand the complexities of our hierarchy of governing documents. I would hope to use this to an orientation walkthrough to help potential candidates be as prepared as possible should they be elected. I found getting a handle on this was easily the most challenging aspect when I was elected to the Board this past May. I would like to see our new Board members be as up to speed as possible when they start. This would probably start with a near bottom up view of the hierarchy, starting with our Bylaws. As I said in my original post, the bottom most level is our Rules, Resolutions and Policies (of which there are many, but they are written with less less legalese).
2) Provide a reference system for the many topics addressed, which, as you suggest are probably tags. My initial stab at that was I created extensively bookmarked searchable PDFs for them all in one folder and I've included bookmarks for my own terms where the actual language was not what I would have though of to search for.
I bought a subscription for the latest MindManager and I've done the built-in training and watched some of the YouTube videos. This is just one of the several ideas I have for mind maps, and I will start with a simple example but I'm trying to plan ahead for an implementation that would support the use cases above.
Original, unbookmarked versions of most of our governing documents, down to our Bylaws are publicly available, but below the Texas laws (which are HTML and PDF), they are just PDFs so I can't link to specific paragraphs, but I could reference the paragraph number as a way to get started.
Maybe I can use Priority markers to identify the level in the hierarchy - or ??
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks Nick,
Two use cases:
1) Provide training material for potential future Board candidates to help them understand the complexities of our hierarchy of governing documents. I would hope to use this to an orientation walkthrough to help potential candidates be as prepared as possible should they be elected. I found getting a handle on this was easily the most challenging aspect when I was elected to the Board this past May. I would like to see our new Board members be as up to speed as possible when they start. This would probably start with a near bottom up view of the hierarchy, starting with our Bylaws. As I said in my original post, the bottom most level is our Rules, Resolutions and Policies (of which there are many, but they are written with less less legalese).
2) Provide a reference system for the many topics addressed, which, as you suggest are probably tags. My initial stab at that was I created extensively bookmarked searchable PDFs for them all in one folder and I've included bookmarks for my own terms where the actual language was not what I would have though of to search for.
I bought a subscription for the latest MindManager and I've done the built-in training and watched some of the YouTube videos. This is just one of the several ideas I have for mind maps, and I will start with a simple example but I'm trying to plan ahead for an implementation that would support the use cases above.
Original, unbookmarked versions of most of our governing documents, down to our Bylaws are publicly available, but below the Texas laws (which are HTML and PDF), they are just PDFs so I can't link to specific paragraphs, but I could reference the paragraph number as a way to get started.
Maybe I can use Priority markers to identify the level in the hierarchy - or ??
Thanks
Bruce
Hello Bruce
Thanks for this. You have identified two strong use cases here. One way to start would be to create a map with two distinct parts:
You could split the map so that the guidance is on the left and documents on the right, or any way that suits. If it is not a strict hierarchy, then instead of a tree, you could consider using a horizontal swimlanes shape to represent the different levels of document, containing a floating topic for each document. You could then draw relationships between them to show important connections.
Linking to bookmarked paragraphs in a PDF has been discussed a few times in this forum so it would be worth searching for that.
Hello Bruce
Thanks for this. You have identified two strong use cases here. One way to start would be to create a map with two distinct parts:
You could split the map so that the guidance is on the left and documents on the right, or any way that suits. If it is not a strict hierarchy, then instead of a tree, you could consider using a horizontal swimlanes shape to represent the different levels of document, containing a floating topic for each document. You could then draw relationships between them to show important connections.
Linking to bookmarked paragraphs in a PDF has been discussed a few times in this forum so it would be worth searching for that.
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