Quote:
Originally Posted by mcoad
But the terminology thing works the other way, too. To say that OF is only a “task manager” despite the “projects”, and that therefore anyone thinking beyond this needs some much larger-scale planner like OmniPlan sells OF short. Obviously it isn’t for multi-person, highly complex projects in an office or similar environment. But, as Ethan describes it on the new video, it is a “professional level” task management tool. It can be used for much more than planning painting the woodshed. For people like me, professionals who mostly work alone, it is a godsend for planning work projects (yes, folks, projects), and was conceived as such - or am I wrong?
And this is where there is a major lack, IMHO. One aspect to planning this level of projects is listing tasks, assigning dates and contexts and the like, and for this OF is superb. But the other is planning these projects over time, seeing how they fit together organizationally and how time can best be spent on them over a given period. And this requires some calendar/time/Gantt-type visualization. Not on anything like the scale of OmniPlan, but something far simpler that that would still translate the task and action lists into such visual terms. To say that OF is intended as too basic for this isn’t a good answer, as for many users such a visualization is part-and-parcel of task management, not some different sphere requiring the big guns of OmniPlan. Without it, OF, as excellent as it is, is left hopping along on one leg. With it, it would be the true killer app for this level of project planning . As I think it is intended to be.
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I don't think OF will ever be a project management software, but it is a task management software based on GTD concepts but flexible enough to allow other methods of planning if the user so chooses.
As such, you would not expect to see Calendar, Gantt-chart, etc. If you want those, you should look at Omniplan or other project management software.
OF does allow you to manage your projects via hierarchical planning view and allows you to manage your tasks via context view. It allows parallel or sequential processing. However, if you need more sophisticated organization such as linking items or seeing related items, and path diagram, etc., then this is not the right program for you.
OF syncs with iCal, and as such you can use iCal to manage your calendars if you need to hard code a task into appointments.
It's ironic that some folks are asking to expand the features of the OF to include certain project management tools or calendaring tools, and that to me is for OF to lose its FOCUS . . .