[Chris]

Sure it does, with an additional group:

--> Parallel prereq group
----> Prereq 1
----> Prereq 2
--> Subsequent action

This only works for sequential, not parallel projects. What if your project also has some parallel actions?

Regarding how I'd organize your example, I'm not sure, which actions are dependent on other actions? Many of these seem independent of each other. For example, I don't see why "Write in-class quiz" would be a prerequisite for "Develop in-class exercises".

Edit: Let me ask you the same question. Given my class prep example above, how could it be implemented in OF today?

[brianogilvie]

Chris: just a thought--might the kind of dependencies you require be provided better by a full-fledged project planning app like OmniPlan or Merlin? OmniFocus seems better suited to the kind of "back of the envelope" planning that most people do for their everyday individual projects.

I recognize the conceptual clarity of your proposal, but in terms of the UI and everyday use, it seems like the investment I would have to make to learn it--to the point where it was totally intuitive to use, and the application fit like a glove--would not be repaid by increases in productivity.

Perhaps OF 2.0, with its projected integration with OmniPlan, would do what you want. Right now, OF 1.0 alpha does everything I need for managing my corral of projects.

[jasong]

Hi Chris,

I've been pondering your proposal, entering your items into a test OF document, playing with them to see if I could get the behavior you're looking for, and I think I've come to understand something that has been gnawing at me about this idea.

One, there aren't any contexts. If that's just because you left them out, I'd love to see how you break it down into contexts; perhaps there's something that I'm missing because of it.

Two, without contexts, it's a linear progression of items (a list of To Dos) which (to be frank) doesn't require anything beyond an outliner that lets you check off “parent” items without it checking off all the “children” items below it. OmniOutliner doesn't do this (to my experience) nor does any outliner that I've personally used, although I'm sure there are several that provide this functionality.

OmniFocus is geared towards the project-has-actions-which-complete-the-project mentality; when you've completed all the items within a project, the project is done. I believe you're looking for a opposite: projects-are-a-list-of-actions-done-in-order; you start with the first action in the list, and proceed down the list.

The difference is quite subtle, in fact it seems to come down to “do you 'check' off the parent item first or last?”

If I understand my GTD, its philosophy expects you to “check off” the parent last, otherwise it's “just” a To Do list, which DA/GTD frowns on.

I think you'd be fighting against OF (and maybe GTD) with your methodology; although I can see ways you can get the effect you desire in OF, it requires rethinking how you enter and organize your projects, which is probably not something you want.

I'd love to know what your thoughts are on this.

[SpiralOcean]

Originally Posted by Chris

-> Action 1.
->-> Action 1A.
->->-> Action 1Aa.
->->-> Action 1Ab.
->-> Action 1B.
->-> Action 1C.

Action 1 is the parent action. It needs to be completed before any children can be completed, but it is not dependent on any children.
?

Dude... I'm beginning to wonder that your purpose here is entirely to muddy the waters and create noise so the signal is lost.

In your example, it appears you are just reversing everything that OmniFocus is doing just to offer a different way of doing something.

Methinks I sniff a troll.

If you want to post a specific reason about how OmniFocus isn't working... then post it, and we will see if either:
1. There is something you haven't thought about.
or
2. There is an enhancement that is needed in OmniFocus.

[curt.clifton]

Originally Posted by Chris

This only works for sequential, not parallel projects. What if your project also has some parallel actions?

Regarding how I'd organize your example, I'm not sure, which actions are dependent on other actions? Many of these seem independent of each other. For example, I don't see why "Write in-class quiz" would be a prerequisite for "Develop in-class exercises".

I'm not asking you to organize my example. It works just fine, thanks. There's a very good reason the in-class quiz comes first. I'm using a technique called test-first-teaching, pioneered by a former colleague Mark Ardis, along with Cheryl Dugas. (Google is your friend.)

My example is just intended to show that some of us have projects where we legitimately want more than a dozen sequential actions in a row. Your proposal requires more than a dozen levels of indenting to handle that. Sounds like a deal breaker to me, unless you can explain why not. Asking me to justify why I want to have that many sequential actions is quite beside the point.

Originally Posted by Chris

Edit: Let me ask you the same question. Given my class prep example above, how could it be implemented in OF today?

Sorry, no time to do it now. I think that mathematically speaking the current implementation in OF is strictly more expressive than your proposal. Both support the same structure of nodes and leaves, but in OF non-leaf nodes come in two flavors, parallel and sequential. I've given a minimal example of something that can be expressed in OF but cannot be expressed in your proposal (i.e., two parallel actions that are both prereqs for a subsequent action). Can you give a minimal example of something that can be expressed in your proposal but not in OF?

Spiral, I don't think Chris is trolling. He's just thinking outside the box. I find that interesting and entertaining. But I also happen to think the proposal puts us in a smaller box than the current design.

[Chris]

What an interesting set of responses! I'm (a) looking for something much more complex than OF, (b) looking for something much simpler, (c) trolling, (d) thinking different. My one-word responese: no, no, no, yes.

Some elaboration.

Regarding, contexts, I don't quite see why that matters, but here you go:

-> Review notes for today's class. (Office Computer)
->-> Edit notes as necessary. (Office Computer)
->-> Prepare in-class slides. (Office Computer)
->-> Prepare in-class handouts. (Office Computer)
->->-> Photocopy handouts. (Copy Room)
->-> Prepare homework assignment. (Office Computer)
->->-> Photocopy homework assignment. (Copy Room)
->-> Make list of demonstration equipment needed. (Office)
->->-> Locate demonstration equipment. (Stockroom)
->->->-> Setup and test demostrations. (Lecture prep room)

-> Grade papers. (Any)
->-> Record grades in roster. (Office Computer)

If I understand my GTD, its philosophy expects you to “check off” the parent last, otherwise it's “just” a To Do list, which DA/GTD frowns on.

Yes, but in my understanding of GTD, "parents" are projects (or subprojects), not actions. Where OF is going wrong is by blurring this distinction. (Note that Ken Case said that this would be fixed in another thread, by making "parent actions" more like projects, which is a Good Thing.) In my model, "parent" actions aren't buckets that contain other actions (like the current parent actions), they are just regular old actions! Their "parenthood" represents something completely different than in the current paradigm. They get checked off when completed just like any other action.

I think I have the GTD philosophy; I just want OF to reflect it better. I agree that projects get checked off last after all the actions in them are done. That's exactly what I want! What I also want is a more flexible dependency model for actions than OF currently has (as far as I can tell).

If you want to post a specific reason about how OmniFocus isn't working... then post it, and we will see if either:
1. There is something you haven't thought about.
or
2. There is an enhancement that is needed in OmniFocus.

Can you give a minimal example of something that can be expressed in your proposal but not in OF?

I'm definitely open to the idea that I'm not using OF properly, or that I don't understand it! Here's what I want in OF that I don't know how to get:

I'm in context mode (showing all contexts!), grouping by date, sorted by date, showing "Available" actions. For the example project above, I want to see exactly two actions "Review notes" and "Grade papers". After I complete "Review Notes" I now want to see six actions (all now available), "Grade papers" (still not done), "Edit notes as appropriate", "Prepare in-class slides", "Prepare in-class handouts", "Prepare homework assignment", and "Make list of demonstration equipment". How do I set up a project so that I get that behaviour in OF today? I don't think I can.

Curt, I of course don't mean to tell you how to organize your projects, or teach your classes! But I will draw one distinction, between ordering of actions and dependency of actions. It's still not clear to me if your items are truly dependent or if you just want or need to do them in a certain order. My parent/child model is meant to express true dependency, not ordering. So if your items are truly dependent 20 levels deep, that's a definite problem for displaying my model (not necessarily insurmountable---I haven't thought about that case). But I would note that OF can filter by order via the difference between "Next" and "Available" actions. If I were expressing your list (for me) and trying to get the effect that (I think) you want, I wouldn't make a 20-deep list. My list would be ordered but shallower, and then I would filter by next action so that I only saw the top item on the list. Does that make sense?

[Craig]

-> Review notes for today's class. (Office Computer)
->-> Edit notes as necessary. (Office Computer)
->-> Prepare in-class slides. (Office Computer)
->-> Prepare in-class handouts. (Office Computer)
->->-> Photocopy handouts. (Copy Room)
->-> Prepare homework assignment. (Office Computer)
->->-> Photocopy homework assignment. (Copy Room)
->-> Make list of demonstration equipment needed. (Office)
->->-> Locate demonstration equipment. (Stockroom)
->->->-> Setup and test demostrations. (Lecture prep room)

-> Grade papers. (Any)
->-> Record grades in roster. (Office Computer)

Here's my go at this in OF. It involves setting up groups within groups. This is only to argue that the logic you're looking for is possible in OF.

Project: Course XYZ (parallel)
--Group: Class prep (not parallel)
----Action: Review notes for today's class. (Office Computer)
----Group: Class execution (parallel)
------Action: Edit notes as necessary. (Office Computer)
------Action: Prepare in-class slides. (Office Computer)
------Group: Handouts (not parallel)
--------Action: Prepare in-class handouts. (Office Computer)
--------Action: Photocopy handouts. (Copy Room)
------Group: Homework (not parallel)
--------Action: Prepare homework assignment. (Office Computer)
--------Action: Photocopy homework assignment. (Copy Room)
------Group: Demonstrations (not parallel)
--------Action: Make list of demonstration equipment needed. (Office)
--------Action: Locate demonstration equipment. (Stockroom)
--------Action: Setup and test demostrations. (Lecture prep room)
--Group: Grading (not parallel)
---- Action: Grade papers (Any)
---- Action: Record grades in roster (Office Computer)

[Chris]

Nice, so it can be done.

There's a cost of course; the creation of six subprojects (or sub-subprojects) as management overhead. Six subprojects to manage twelve actual actions; that's 50% more stuff I have to type into OF (and select options, dates, etc.) compared to my model. I'll have to see how painful it is in practice. It'll be interesting to see how the interface for this evolves; as I said before, I think it's a very good thing that "action groups" are becoming more like projects.

So here's another question: is there a way to save a project as a template, similar to way you can make stencils in OmniGraffle? I suppose you could just copy an existing project, but it would be nice to have a library of project templates that's separate from you current list of projects.

[Craig]

Originally Posted by Chris

So here's another question: is there a way to save a project as a template, similar to way you can make stencils in OmniGraffle? I suppose you could just copy an existing project, but it would be nice to have a library of project templates that's separate from you current list of projects.

http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=4374

[sprugman]

If the parents of action groups would just pop into the bloody context view, I think your problems would be solved without the overhead of those six extra items. <sigh>