I must be in the minority. I think MLO fully meets the needs of managing a project, but it obviously depends on the situation. What I mean is that I don't manage projects with a ton of people - it is mostly myself and my "waiting for" items. I manage those with the context field". The other difference is that I don't believe in spending time building a week-long, month-long, view of what I'll be working on. I follow GTD and validate the plan each time I pick the next action. This way, I have a rough outline of a project and don't ever have to throw the how plan out when half-way along the goal changes, the action I just finished changes the path to done, or the goal is cancelled. Plus I can accommodate having a new action thrown in that wasn't considered before without all the hassle a full-blown project management tool (like MS Project) can cause.
I don't view MLO as a project management tool, I view it as a mind-capturing tool that can be applied to projects. On Monday, April 27, 2015 at 3:01:48 AM UTC-5, DBvc wrote: > > Thanks Dwight for your clear point of view. > You are right: i'm, as probably many others, in the "middle earth" between > real project management and task management needs. > My working needs are mostly about task management but then i need to fit > them into a working agenda. > > Project management software (i have used and tested many of them) are too > complex and have a less efficient way to do that: indeed they are tailored > to large business projects that may span for long time, managing resources, > constraints etc... > Due to their complexity generally they a need a resource fully dedicated > to managing it. > > On the opposite side 99% of task managers are too simple and have so many > limitations that they can't fit my needs: they seems more tailored to > common people than to business people. > Being based on GTD scheme they lacks of the key points needed for a real > working life. > > If i can dream a Planner those will be his main features : > - Task management > - Task is organised in catagories and contexts > - Each task has a due date, start and end date, effort and resource > (this is just a note not a real resource managemnent, just to highlight > when i delegate a task to someone) > - Task can be grouped under a Project that inherit task efforts to > calculate the total project effort > > - Calendar management > - arrange tasks into calendar > > - Publish calendar > - sync and share calendar to a common platform (google calendar or any > other with similar features) > > - Mobile access > - have mobile access thru his own app to manage even less features > than desktop app (inbox and calendar management are enough) > > - All process must be very efficient so that i will not spend more time > managing my tasks than task himself. > In that way i found that i can't work well with the many online solutions > that lacks of efficient interface as with pure project management softwares > that are too complex and overbloated for my needs. > > At the end unfortunately this software does'nt exist yet. > I found few of them, including MLO, that are not far away from this (MLO > lacks of calendar management and few project management points), but i > can't avoid any of the above key points to fullfill my needs. > > Obviously i'm open to pay more for such software: the fact that all task > management softwares have a cost that is not more than 100$ show the market > they adressed to. > For a more professional and business approach to my needs i can pay up to > $400-500, but the software must really help my life. > > Maybe i will found something as it in future, for the moment i'll continue > to check around (including monitoring MLO software) > > Thanks > > > Il giorno venerdì 24 aprile 2015 05:12:07 UTC+2, Dwight Arthur ha scritto: >> >> On Monday, April 20, 2015 at 8:06:11 AM UTC-4, DBvc wrote: >>> >>> I'm new to MLO and i'm valuating if can fit my actual task/project >>> workflow. >>> >> >> Hi, Dario. You are not the first person in your position and you won't be >> the last. There are a lot of people with pretty similar situations around, >> some still looking for help in figuring out what to do and others resigned >> to some uncomfortable compromise. This is just my personal opinion and I >> really don't know enough about your situation to judge but my take is that >> you are stuck at the boundary between task management and project >> management. >> >> Task management involves capturing my whole backlog of things that need >> to be accomplished, organizing them in a way that helps me quickly and >> easily determine what I am supposed to be doing now, get a short list of >> useful things to do next, prevents urgent or important things from getting >> lost, and minimizes the amount of time I spend managing my backlog instead >> of completing it. It may involve figuring out which things in my backlog >> are just never going to happen and helping me abandoning them. It may >> involve keeping track of what's already done. It may involve figuring out >> what's dependent on what so I don't waste time working on things that are >> not ready to be completed. It may involve the relationship between my tasks >> and somebody else's tasks. >> >> Project management involves identifying resource pools including resource >> capacity availability and schedules, planning the allocation of resources >> to tasks in a way that maximizes productivity, estimating timeframes and >> resource costs for project completion, budgeting, tracking actuals against >> plan, adjusting plans to accommodate variances with minimized adverse >> effect on profitability, and finding early indications of problems with the >> plan and making appropriate adjustments, and so on. >> >> I consider MLO to be the very most powerful and capable task management >> software available. I do not consider it to be project management software. >> MLO is such a good task manager that it even includes some rudimentary >> project management capabilities, maybe even enough to get you and Robert >> through your day. maybe not, maybe you really need project management >> software. Wikipedia offers a list of 166 different applications for project >> management software, maybe one of them would suit you better. I have >> previous experience with one of them, Microsoft Project. It required some >> expensive hardware and software, a skilled sysadmin to keep the wheels >> turning, one to two fulltime team members devoted to ensuring that all the >> project plans were up to date plus finding and explaining variances. In >> addition every team member spent around a half hour per day recording what >> was accomplished, how many hours work remain on each open task, what open >> dependencies are blocking their progress, and what unplanned tasks occupied >> their time. >> >> It's tempting to try to achieve the high levels of control and >> documentation that come from fullblown project management but to do it with >> an inexpensive, easy to use task manager. Some people actually do figure >> out the compromises necessary to succeed at this. For most, it's like the >> search for delicious filling food that isn't fattening, or the search for a >> low-risk high-return investment. >> >> Maybe Andrey and the MLO team should invest in making MLO a better >> project management tool. It has been suggested often by a lot of people, >> including me. But at this point, I think that would just move them from >> being the best and most powerful task manager into being a rudimentary, >> unsophisticated also-ran project management tool. I wouldn't recommend it. >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/e1c74238-5b77-4f19-9d9e-fd489528a06a%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
