[Toadling]

Originally Posted by dancingbrook

Let's say I'm going to put up new shelves in a room, and they require these actions.
Shelf Brackets (buy)
Shelves (buy)
Paint (buy)
Paint Shelves
Relocate Current Pictures
Install Brackets
Install Shelves

Does this achieve what you're looking for?

New Shelves (sequential)
    -Prepare shelving (parallel)
        -Shelves (sequential)
            -Prepare for painting shelves (parallel)
                -buy paint
                -buy shelves
            -paint shelves
        -Brackets (sequential)
            -Prepare for bracket installation (parallel)
                -buy shelf brackets
                -relocate current pictures
            -install brackets
    -install shelves

Originally Posted by dancingbrook

After looking at this, it is apparent that GTD (and OmniFocus) is a bit stilted in it's conception. Next Actions could be many things for any set of tasks (project). It is a bit artificial to create some action groups that are sequential and others that are parallel, as many projects contain some of both, ad to create "groups" just to separate them into parallel and sequential makes no sense, especially given one might find oneself inserting something sequential into a parallel group (or vice versa).

Dependancies can be quite complicated, I agree. But it looks like OmniFocus provides the necessary tools for building your project. The complexity of dependencies requires extra planning, but the same would hold true even with Gantt charts and OmniPlan.

I guess I'm not clear on what you're proposing. What exactly would you like OmniFocus to do? Some kind of connection between OmniFocus and OmniPlan has been requested elsewhere on these forums and Omni Group has stated that it's something they're considering for a future release.