How do you all keep track of/manage projects?
 

Hi all,

One of my main problems is keeping track of projects. I'm looking for suggestions on ways I can make project management easier and more efficient. How does everyone here do it?

As a background, I currently use Google Docs for project management. For instance, if I'm building an aquarium, I will create a folder in Google Docs called "Project: Home aquarium". In it will be a document where all my ideas for the aquarium are laid out step-by-step. I then create a project in Omnifocus under the same name as the Google Doc project, with the Next Actions I determined in the planning stage. As I knock of those tasks, I go into the Google Doc to update the plan, i.e. cross out those items I've completed.

That said, it's very unwieldy. Sometimes I'll forget to update the task list because I'm in a hurry, or I'll forget to input the Next Action in Omnifocus, etc. So if you have a better suggestion on project management, please let me know!

What value do you see yourself creating by trying to track the project in two different places instead of just one? Why not do it all with OmniFocus, with links to external documents if you don't like keeping them internally? I'm not understanding why you would want to maintain two parallel lists of next actions, for starters.

I'm not really tracking my projects in OF, rather, OF is more of the "bookmark" that tells me what my immediate NA is for a project. The external document is where I track the project's status. Many times the project is fairly large and requires some subprojects, I can't track this on OF and to do so would require serious tweaking (though this may have changed recently), so I opt to keep the project page separate.

I guess another example would be a mindmap with parts that have been ID'd as sub-projects. I can link multiple projects to that mindmap document, and check off on the sub-projects as they're completed.

If you all know of a way to keep track of this on OF itself, let me know as it would help me be much more efficient.

Again, I'm a bit puzzled as to why you think you can't track a large project in OmniFocus. If you want to be able to manage each sub-project with all of the project management tools, make a folder to contain all of the pieces, and make the sub-projects into projects in that folder.

Perhaps if you outlined the specific obstacles you see to managing a large project in OmniFocus (and your idea of the scale a project needs to be large) we could find some solutions...

Hmmm, would you be able to describe how you would do it on OF? I guess I don't quite know how to explain it. Apologies.

:-) I'm afraid if you don't know how to explain what your question is, no one will be able to answer it.

I'd suggest that you start by watching the tutorial videos [URL="http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnifocus/videos/"]here[/URL]. If that doesn't answer your question, it may help you reformulate your question so we know what the problem is.

If you [I]do[/I] still have questions after watching the videos and want to try asking again, it might be helpful to describe an example of a project and sub-projects, and which parts you are currently using OmniFocus for. Even better, you could include some screenshots to show what you're doing. Believe it or not, it is really hard to tell what the actual difficulty is from what you've described.

You could also try contacting the OmniGroup support gurus by [URL="mailto:omnifocus@omnigroup.com"]email[/URL] or phone (+1-800-315-6664). There's also a guy who indicates in [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=15294"]this thread[/URL] that he might be willing to screen-share with people looking for help.

OmniFocus is designed to have the flexibility to manage and keep track of complex projects. You probably won't need any hacks or work-arounds once you understand how the software works. Watching the videos will give you a good start.

OK, let me try this example.

One project is to sell our house. There are a number of "sub-projects", dependent projects, dependent tasks, etc. Where, in Omnifocus, can I have one consolidated outline to quickly update the status of each sub-project, dependent project, etc?

I realize that I can focus on just the main project folder, and that will list all the sub-folders, projects, etc, but is there a way I can view everything splayed out in an outline format?

Thanks!

As you mentioned, if you select/focus on a folder in the sidebar, the outline pane on the right of the OmniFocus window will display the contents of that folder in an outline.

That's generally how I manage large projects. Create a folder for the big project, then have the sub-projects in that folder, in rough chronological order. (Initial subprojects at the top, then later ones.)

When you say "splayed out" do you mean in a mindmap-ish diagram form? If that's what you need, you could export from OmniFocus to OmniGraffle, I suppose, but that's not how folks generally use the app. The list approach that OF takes seems to work for most folks, but "most" and "everyone" are different things. :-)

Thanks Brian.

I do mindmap sometimes, but generally I plan out on paper/word processor using an outline format. I just dump everything I think will be important for this project and start arranging it into key components, sub-projects, etc. Then I re-enter everything into OF.

I know I can probably do this outlining/planning in OF itself, but it's more cumbersom and it seems to flow better when I'm just writing/typing things out in an unorganized fashion first. Does this make sense, or am I doing something wrong here?

No, I don't think you're doing anything wrong, but at it's heart OmniFocus is kind of an outliner, so it's hard to make specific suggestions. It sounds like the app isn't quite gelling for your workflow for some reason that we haven't quite put our finger on yet.

Yeah, it does seem like we could save you the effort of bouncing back and forth between two lists, but we need a bit more info. If you can articulate specific friction points, we may be able to help at that point.

One shot in the dark: In a text editor, most folks outline by breaking lines with the Return and Tab keys. That doesn't work as well in OmniFocus, but there are some equivalent keyboard shortcuts that can be almost as fast.

Return - makes a new row
Command-] - indent the current row
Command-[ - outdent the current row
Command-} (Command-Shift-] in other words) - add a new indented row after the selected one
Command-{ (Command-Shift-[) - add a new outdented row after the selected one

That probably won't completely address things, but if you can think of any other friction points and communicate them here or to the [EMAIL="omnifocus@omnigroup.com"]support ninjas[/EMAIL], we're happy to help.

Thanks Brian!

That does help a bit, it helps to make things flow quickly. I appreciate your and everyone else's assistance.

Mischka

I'd like to add to this thread
 

I work for a Mac based Design Agency. I am looking at Merlin 2 and OmniPlan. I REALLY want to use OmniPlan but the limitation is what this thread is talking about. Switching between different project files "quickly" is not good enough. I need to balance projects.

We have a group of designers 5, support staff 3, developers 2, and myself as a project planner.

We do: Websites, Campaigns, Design Work

We use Daylite to track project tasks, but we need a "setup" tool to align all of our projects before it gets entered into Daylite. Why? Because Daylite doesn't balance tasks very well.

IE., In Daylite I can have 3 projects, but if I look at my tasks there is no hiarchy, just a list of TODO's. This doesn't work for our designers because of work-load-balancing. A designer can have 2 tasks on the same day that take 8 hours. With me so far? Micromanaging everyones tasks is not the answer, were talking about hundreds of tasks, etc.

What I need from OmniPlan is to plan everyones "major" project out, whether its a website or campaign. These projects are complex, requiring hundreds of tasks.

In addition, if 1 designer is working on 3 projects I want to load balance my team. So while Omni Plan does this for 1 project, I need this function for multiple projects. So I can view all 30 websites and 5 campaigns we are working on ... and [B]know where the bottlenecks are, where people are getting stuck.[/B]

My imagined workflow is this:

1. Plan Project 1, Project 2, Project 3
2. Attach Project 1, 2, 3 into one list... now I can see where activities overlap and adjust accordingly. Once I align everything, I export into Daylite.
3. Plan Project 4
4. Attach to Project 1,2,3 and see if 4 overlaps with any of those.
5. Rinse and repeat

We "could" manage 1 massive OmniPlan file with everything in it.. but with 20 projects under one file this is just not feasible. In addition, I would like to drop "complete" projects from the master file... deleting old projects is not the way to go.

Until this function is implemented, I really see OmniPlan useful for personal use or tiny shops that are working on one project at a time. For bigger teams where tasks and responsibilities overlap, unfortunately it is just not ready for that.

...which is too bad because I really love the Omni Group. :(

noisebug, I'll make sure someone on the OmniPlan team sees this, but was it intended for the OmniFocus forum?

[QUOTE=noisebug;75305]
What I need from OmniPlan is to plan everyones "major" project out, whether its a website or campaign. These projects are complex, requiring hundreds of tasks.

In addition, if 1 designer is working on 3 projects I want to load balance my team. So while Omni Plan does this for 1 project, I need this function for multiple projects. So I can view all 30 websites and 5 campaigns we are working on ... and [B]know where the bottlenecks are, where people are getting stuck.[/B]

We "could" manage 1 massive OmniPlan file with everything in it.. but with 20 projects under one file this is just not feasible. In addition, I would like to drop "complete" projects from the master file... deleting old projects is not the way to go.

[/QUOTE]

This is a popular feature request that we want to add in a later version of OmniPlan. You mentioned that putting 20 projects into 1 OmniPlan file isn't feasible partly because there's no way to drop complete projects. One possible solution would be to hide completed projects by using the filter feature to only show tasks and/or groups that are incomplete. Not a perfect solution, but I thought I'd mention it in case you wanted to give that a try.