Project Planning

Hello,

I intend to build multiple commerce stores, and I will make a plan for these. I will use mind node mind maps for the plans but was wandering about OmniPlan, since I have been using OmniFocus for years.

What can you guys say about OmniPlan? Can it be linked with OmniFocus? I feel it maybe too complicated and not simple to use, not in a bad way just, that maybe I don’t need all of the features it has?

All opinions and views welcome

Omniplan is good for tracking linked tasks. You can assign start and end dates and/or durations; you can build in quite complex dependencies (“Painting the wall cannot begin until 3 days after plastering is complete”) and you can assign resources and track their costs; neither of these is easy in OF. If you need to show other people project status, OP allows you to produce a variety of different outputs.

There’s a learning curve, which can be quite tough if you do not have much project management knowledge.

There is limited interaction between OF and OP - it’s been a discussion topic here for a long time.

Personally, I think that OP is better for complex project work than OF, which I think of as more of an activity planner. I use both all the time, but then I’m a professional project manager, so I have to.

Hope this helps

thanks this has been helpful.

To be honest, I will have things with dependencies like that, complex dependencies so I will consider OMNI Planner. I’ll assume it can be used also in a simplified way.

It’s a decision now between £20 mind mapping software or the Omni Plan.

:-)

Mind mapping software is great for organising thoughts and ideas, and you can use it very effectively to create the activities in your plan (I do this frequently, when creating a new plan).

You can use OmniPlan in a simple way - it’s a good way to get to know it

I get the impression that you will build one model for a generic commerce store and then duplicate it in action multiple times. That is a “one-off” use in my mind. I would wonder whether OmniPlan is overkill for this use. I can see it being useful when you have projects that must follow time-lines and that have network-like sub-dependencies. I can see it being useful when you have to set up these kinds of projects on a regular basis. I cannot see it being useful for “one-off” projects. I also cannot see it being useful for cases where it will be used only to set up a project plan and then not used again once the project is operational (similar to a “one-off” use).

Perhaps you could consider free options to project management/planning such as these below while you figure out your real needs.

Otherwise, as far as mind-mapping is concerned, I can suggest one thing from my experience. Mind mapping will help outline the dependencies and relationships of the parts of your plan. Pure mind mapping will however by itself not do anything to organize the time-line of what to do. The one possible exception is to join mind-mapping with task-dependent tracking. For example, allow nodes on a mind-map to represent tasks with start/due dates, % completion, priorities, and tags. When you might want this type of software, I can highly recommend Curio http://www.zengobi.com.


JJW