[Toadling]

Originally Posted by JohnJ80

I'd suggest that we back-off on the the oneupmanship stuff and who is the expert on software development. It does get a little tedious and it seems more than a little condescending.

I agree, although I'll point out that I never claimed to be an expert on software development. If you read my observation as condescending (despite the smiley face), I'm sorry. Perhaps it was a little brusque. Or maybe something was lost in translation. Either way, no harm was intended.

Originally Posted by JohnJ80

I, for one, have managed software development groups and I find the questions asked to be reasonable and your response to be quite dismissive of a good question.

But the OP didn't ask a question, it was an accusation! In my mind, that accusation (of broken promises) was unfair.

It seems to me that Omni has been very careful not to promise anything. All they communicated was their plan, which, of course, is subject to change.

I'm no expert, and I'm not talking down to anyone, but I have enough experience to know that software development suffers from second-order ignorance. It's extremely difficult to make accurate plans and stick to them when you don't even know what to plan for. The solution: keep your plans flexible and adapt as unforeseen obstacles present themselves. It seems to me, as an outside observer, that that's exactly what Omni has done.

Again, I'm not claiming to have any special insight into these matters nor to be any more knowledgable than otter or JohnJ80. In fact, as a development manager himself, I'm sure JohnJ80 has dealt with similar issues in his own work.

All I'm saying is that we should assume that Omni is managing these issues to the best of their ability, that they're making decisions based on a variety of factors (some of which might not be apparent to end users), and that Omni has got the best interest of their customers in mind.

Originally Posted by JohnJ80

In point of fact, the only people qualified to answer these development questions are the Omni developers.

Exactly, which is why I suggest we back-off on the accusations of broken promises and give Omni some credit for managing this thing.

Originally Posted by JohnJ80

Here's what I've been able to distill from this discussion and the linked threads so far:

1. There are a number of ways OF is used and with similar, but not identical, systems to pure GTD. Looks like Omni is trying to appeal to more than just GTD (or certainly more than just the high priests of GTD methodology) users and these could use some app notes to try and clarify how to do that. Maybe a sticky would be a good way to do this or a blog entry.

2. Tags or a general purpose metadata column will be added at some point. Conjecture by Omni was that this was *maybe* 1.7 and now is 2.0. Looks like it has been a moving target for a variety of reasons, although unexplained. I'm seeing that the functionality was *promised* and committed but the date is fungible. Be nice to have some more specifics on this so we can understand what that means and more resolution on when we can expect that.

3. "metadata" as a feature seems to be undefined. Be nice if this were more defined and if this were spotlight searchable (ala like the Tags app by gravity apps is.). Be nice to have more discussion on this and to provide feedback and feed forward info to Omni as they develop.

I think these are some constructive observations. My only point of contention is that I'm not convinced the metadata column has actually been promised. I haven't seen that language used by any of the Omni folks.

Maybe it just comes down to semantics, but I think we need to have some empathy for Omni's position. On one hand, they really want to let customers know where the app is headed and keep them informed about upcoming features. But on the other hand, Omni has got be careful in managing expectations. As we've seen, it's easy to mistake plans for promises.

So what is Omni to do?

(A) Don't reveal their plans in the first place?
(B) Reveal their plans and manage the backlash when things go awry?

Seems either way is troublesome.

-Dennis