To Do apps versus project management

If you have a good To Do app, its job is to focus on you and what you’re doing, what you need to do. If what you need to do is one very substantial thing that’s going to take time, resources, people and money, you need project management software.

From my MacNN review of OmniPlan – project management software from the makers of OmniFocus and OmniOutliner:

Project management is like having a bionic To Do task list, and software doesn’t make it easy per se: software tools help project managers, but there is a huge amount to the job that is down to your judgement and skill. So such software has to be full-featured, but it also has to be very adaptable to what you need — and it has to help you, it has to be a tool in your arsenal, it can’t try to be a magical solution to everything.

There are many project managers who would say it also has to be Microsoft Project for Windows. That is as close to a standard as there is in this world, but the four words of its name contain two problems. One is Windows: there is no official Mac version of Microsoft Project. The second is Microsoft. It’s written into Microsoft’s DNA that it never removes a feature, it only adds new ones. So Project has every conceivable feature managers could have heard of, but this makes it hard to use.

In comparison, the Omni Group began on NeXT computers, and only moved away from that to OS X and iOS. It does no Windows software, and only makes four major applications, all of which share similar designs.

It’s a project management application designed for professionals — that’s a broad term, but what it means is you wouldn’t bother to plan your picnic lunch with it, and if you’re running the next NASA mission to Mars, you might want something more powerful. Only “might,” though. There are specific things that OmniPlan doesn’t do, but in general our only serious criticism is that we’d like it to do more of what it already does.

Review – OmniPlan (OS X, iOS) Review | MacNN

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