Omniplan review manual#
Omniplan review professional#
Omniplan review series#
Omniplan review mac#

Omniplan review mac#

So I’ll briefly touch on what I most like about OmniPlan: the beauty all these features (bar one) persisting across both Mac and iOS versions of the app. With a view to an in-depth comparison, I’m working with a handful of project management solutions for Apple’s platforms. There are also powerful automation features developed with Apple’s former automation wizard, Sal Soghoian, while the iOS version includes Scribble support. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' As Douglas Adams once wrote, 'I love deadlines. If you’re anything like me, a tool like this is a useful way to ensure you don’t end up promising a schedule you simply cannot deliver.

Omniplan review series#

The app also boasts a tool you can use to stress test projects, called 'Monte Carlo simulations.' This is basically a series of automated tests in which OmniPlan simulates what happens if parts of a project are delayed in order to deliver a relatively credible assessment of the likelihood the project will be delivered on time.

Omniplan review manual#

Manual task scheduling and support for scheduling recurring tasks (daily, weekly, monthly) should help project managers focus on what needs to be done.

To dive into project details, project managers can use a new view in which the entire window shows the project outline. You can zoom out or zoom into project status using the task roll-up option, which automatically collapses sub-tasks and milestones into a single line in the Gantt chart. OmniGroupĪlready available for Mac, it's now also available on iPhone and iPad in an integration which means you won’t need to re-learn how the app behaves to make use of it on all the supported platforms. This makes it a little easier to automate elements of project management that you might otherwise forget. That’s useful, but what makes it more useful is that you can choose when you want to sync this data or share it in PDFs or other formats.

You can also sync your plan across members of your team, so long as they are running the app. So, for example, in the event you are working on a complex project and a component is running late you will receive a 'violation warning' that lets you know this in order that you can manage the impact. At the same time, it’s easily possible to ignore the more powerful tools - you’ll still have excellent insight into what you are working to achieve. What drives the app is the notion that beginning use should be relatively approachable, while more powerful tools and the capacity to zoom in for additional insights into project progress should also be available. In an interesting aside, Case noted his father was an industrial engineer working for Boeing who made extensive use of Gantt charts using pen and paper as he managed huge-scale projects. To help, he built his father a work scheduling app on his first computer, an Atari 800. “We didn't want people to be limited because they found the app didn’t have enough depth for what they wanted to do,” Case said. “We wanted it to be easy for them to capture a project, get into it and organize it to the level of depth they need - to grow into the project and become more advanced in using the app as needs grow.”Īt the same time, Omni also wanted to ensure its project management solution could meet the needs of complex projects. That’s why you’ll find increasingly powerful features nested inside OmniPlan. They don't have a lot of time to just spend in project management tools the whole day, they don't want to spend a lot of time when they're working with it.

Omniplan review professional#

I spoke with OmniGroup founder and CEO Ken Case, who explained the fundamental aim of the software:“OmniPlan is designed for project managers, typically, that's their professional role, sometimes they're dedicated project managers - but it can also be somebody for whom this is one of many hats. It means project managers can easily assess overall project status and also swiftly focus on deeper project data to stay on top. It also supports dark mode, syncs automatically (and speedily) via iCloud, and does a great job helping project managers assemble complex tasks within Gantt Charts. These charts aren’t simply images, but can host dependencies, so the tool becomes a working window into project completeness.