Ventana Systems, Inc. provides products and services to solve hard problems and improve organizational performance. Ventana publishes Vensim which is used for constructing models of business, scientific, environmental, and social systems.
This is an excellent tool that I learned for my Systems 710 class. It's in some way a brainstorming tool that would eventually organize your thoughts. It also links individual states to each other, to show a positive or negative association to one another.
I'm planning to use this to depict the obstacles to earning my PhD at Stevens with this tool. I'm sure the outcome will be beneficial, one way or another.