Need a kickstart
 

A colleague and I were given iPads and we are trying to figure how best to take advantage of them. We bought OmniFocus as a way to try and keep track of all the stuff that pops up in our world. We are the only software developers in this group and it seems that lots of folks have projects they want us to work on etc.

With all that said I am trying to figure out how best to use OmniFocus to track of everything. I get the inbox that makes sense but what I am having a little trouble with is projects, contexts and actions. For example, we have two software products that we work on. Each one has some enhancements that need to made. Usually, but not always, enhancements are tied to a particular customer.

So would you create a project or context for the product? I am leaning toward context. Since work may be for a particular customer that sounds like a project to me. Obviously, there are usually hard end dates but open start dates. I think I can set dates on projects? The work needing to be done to complete a project sounds like actions to me.

So you folks better versed in GTD than I can you tell me if I am even close in a reasonable approach?

Thanks,
Doug

In GTD-speak, a project is anything that requires two or more separate actions to complete. A context is something you need to be able to work on an action: a phone to make phone calls, Bob to discuss the design of the widget you are building together, the grocery store to buy some milk. A customer generally wouldn't be a context unless you could only work on some action with the customer present.

I'd make a folder for each product, to contain individual projects relating to that product. Projects that are sufficiently complex might be broken down into another folder full of projects (you can nest folders, of course). Nothing stopping you from having separate folders of projects for different customers.

Projects take dates just like actions. Note that the most restrictive date in the hierarchy overrules others; if you make a project that is due June 1, you can set a due date of June 10 for one of its actions, but OmniFocus will treat it as if you had set it to June 1. Similarly, if you have a project that you set to start on June 1, but the first action has a start date of June 10, nothing from that project will show up as available until June 10.

Some resource material:

[url]http://www.omnigroup.com/ftp/pub/software/MacOSX/Extras/OmniFocus/GTDandOmniFocus.pdf[/url] — OmniFocus/GTD white paper, aimed at the Mac version of OmniFocus, but the concepts apply to the iPad app as well.

[url]http://www.usingomnifocus.com/resources/[/url] — enough stuff to give you a guaranteed eye-glazing if you try to absorb it all at once!

Here's another resource to look into:

[url]http://www.asianefficiency.com/omnifocus/[/url]