structurizmo
2006-08-16, 05:00 AM
I'll give a short intro to give a context in which my problems occur. I work as a freelance project manager with a team of 5 database programmers, interaction designers and flash developers. Each project we do has it's own projectID and uses it's own set of resources(people) and tasks.
The first problem I ran into is that all projects share resources & tasks. Because of this I assumed I should manage everything in 1 project file, not in several project files. By grouping tasks that belong to one project I figured I could keep an overview of all running and planned tasks. At the same time Omniplan can see whether resources have conflicting tasks. Perfect! However, the key factor with all project management (imho) is communication. When I put everything in one timeline on my computer I do have a nice overview of everything, the other don't. When I export to a web thing I get a nice lay out of EVERYTHING. It is essential to me that the people I use in my planning can actually see when they appear in my planning and most of all: how their tasks relate to the other tasks and to which project they belong.
The first bottomline to my remark is that the core of Omniplan is the ability to combine tasks and resource and lay them out in a highly usable gantt chart but the way of publishing and showing the output is very poor.
A flash export possibility could make things much better. If you offer an scaling slider so you can view the gantt chart in a very flexible way and highlight per task, per resource, see the progress (also related to the baseline) or highlight the critical path I think the output is much more appreciated. The ical calendars are merely an extra service to this.
The second bottom line ;) is that I think that - from my pov - you should not focus on compatibility of all calendar software because that's not the area in which Omniplan will make a difference. With pm I think sharing calendars is not the effort, this can also be done with just one email. Next to this not everybody uses calendar software. Gantt charting and visualising a process really adds something, as long as all parties can view it, like via a webbrowser/server.
I wish to say that I really think Omniplan is going to be a very nice and intuïtive app. I've been testing the beta the last few days and at this moment these are the points that really limit it's power seen from my pov (of course not for everyone).
The first problem I ran into is that all projects share resources & tasks. Because of this I assumed I should manage everything in 1 project file, not in several project files. By grouping tasks that belong to one project I figured I could keep an overview of all running and planned tasks. At the same time Omniplan can see whether resources have conflicting tasks. Perfect! However, the key factor with all project management (imho) is communication. When I put everything in one timeline on my computer I do have a nice overview of everything, the other don't. When I export to a web thing I get a nice lay out of EVERYTHING. It is essential to me that the people I use in my planning can actually see when they appear in my planning and most of all: how their tasks relate to the other tasks and to which project they belong.
The first bottomline to my remark is that the core of Omniplan is the ability to combine tasks and resource and lay them out in a highly usable gantt chart but the way of publishing and showing the output is very poor.
A flash export possibility could make things much better. If you offer an scaling slider so you can view the gantt chart in a very flexible way and highlight per task, per resource, see the progress (also related to the baseline) or highlight the critical path I think the output is much more appreciated. The ical calendars are merely an extra service to this.
The second bottom line ;) is that I think that - from my pov - you should not focus on compatibility of all calendar software because that's not the area in which Omniplan will make a difference. With pm I think sharing calendars is not the effort, this can also be done with just one email. Next to this not everybody uses calendar software. Gantt charting and visualising a process really adds something, as long as all parties can view it, like via a webbrowser/server.
I wish to say that I really think Omniplan is going to be a very nice and intuïtive app. I've been testing the beta the last few days and at this moment these are the points that really limit it's power seen from my pov (of course not for everyone).