Simplicity Is Bliss

Just the day before yesterday the OmniGroup released the beta of OmniPlan 2.0, the project management and planning software from the OmniFocus makers, into the wild (download it here). And as many expected the good folks around Ken Case are working on improved sharing and collaboration features using the OmniSync Service (WebDAV) already known from OmniFocus. A tighter integration between project management and personal task management, i.e. between OmniPlan and OmniFocus, is not yet specifically mentioned, but many ask for it and with a shared cloud platform like the OmniSync service, it could certainly be on the horizon.

This integration is something many of you have been waiting for and it would represent a logical development in the OmniGroup portfolio. I remain suspicious of the true value as I can see the use case for the Project Manager to move his or all tasks from OmniPlan into OmniFocus for daily tracking, but have challenges to see a fully consistent and homogeneous team environment where literally every project member uses OmniFocus and hence you could simply send them their set of project tasks straight into their OmniFocus. While this may work in one small company, larger cooperation won’t provide that environment and freelancers huddling as temporary project teams will also bring their individual weapons of choice.

Unless we get some sort of standard, open exchange format for project plans and tasks, this type of eco systems will have severe challenges to compete with web-based collaboration solution such as Basecamp from 37signals, which is generally accessible for everyone with a decent browser.

However, you may want to check out and follow the beta versions of OmniPlan 2.0 or if Merlin is your project management application check out their freshly released AppleScript that allows exporting project structures from Merlin straight into OmniFocus.