Longer term (project) planning software MacOS (& iOS)

Software
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Hi,

I use OmniFocus and Text Editors to track and monitor my short term goals, projects and tasks.

However I am looking for something that will help me get a longer term view of projects on the horizon (3 to 12 months) so that I can plan accordingly. It needs to be something visual in the sense that I need to be able to zoom out and look at a year or 6 months at a time but then again be able to zoom in to a more detailed month by month view. I don’t have any resources to share, i.e. all the work is done by my and I do not need to manage any costs. What I really do need to manage is my time and to be able to plan out when i need to be starting work on projects; the majority of the projects will have a definite due date for completion. I will use OmniFocus to breakdown the projects as and when they become due and so that will take care of the granular detail.

I have tried the OmniPlan trial for a fortnight previously but I think it was overkill for what i need.I was going to try it again and realised it was nearly £200 so thought again.

I imagine my ideal software to be a hybrid of OmniPlan/Calendar/MindNode where I can get that 10,000+ feet view of my upcoming work projects / available time / holidays / etc.

Any ideas? How do you achieve your longer term project planning?

Thank you for your ideas.

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This is something I’ve struggled to find as well. I’ve tried out OmniPlan, inShort, and Aeon Timeline, but none of them really clicked for me. For now I’m using a mix of text files, OmniOutliner and occasionally the Gantt chart functionality of Typora. However, I’m not entirely satisfied with my project planning workflow. I’m interested to see what other folks are using.

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I forgot to mention that I have tried a very simple Excel spreadsheet with a continuously running horizontal calendar however it was quite cumbersome.

I remember now why I thought i’d try OmniPlan again as there was mention on the latest Omni Podcast that they were working on a way for OmniFocus and OmniPlan to talk to each other which peaked my interest.

I’m not sure a calendar app (such as BusyCal or Fantastical 2) would give me the view I would need…they just offer week/month/year…there is no way to zoom in and out to a bespoke period of time. Shame.

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For higher level planning, I use Curio with Kanban boards and mind maps and templates for project layouts.

This does NOT give project views on a time line. I can however imagine one of two approaches to address this need.

  • Use a Kanban-type board with slots for “Within Year”, “Within 6 Months”, “Within 3 Months” …

  • Use tags with the same terminology.

I have also seen good recommendations for HyperPlan, especially on the CRIMP Forum.

–
JJW

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I don’t have sophisticated needs for long-term planing. I put everything with a due date in Todoist, which creates calendar items in Google Calendar, then alert myself at certain intervals prior to the event. (Todoist lets you set multiple alerts.) I completely live inside Google Calendar, and Todoist lets you have 2-way Google Calendar sync, meaning you can make a change in the calendar and it will sync back to the task app; many other task managers will sync to a calendar but do not implement 2-way sync.

For something basic long-term I’ll sometimes make a list in Google Keep and give myself a basic alert reminder.

I also use Trello’s free tier, which can be excellent for long-term planning. (Similar excellent kanban services with free tiers include MeisterTask and KanbanFlow.) The pay tier lets you set alerts.

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I can certainly empathise with chrisa’s desire/need for some sort of visual aid to provide an overview of where work is at and what is coming up over time.

I don’t find Omnifocus’ forecast view much help with that.

Pagico might work. There is a screencastsonline video for it too. I think it is available through Setapp too.

I didn’t go with it in the end as there seems to be limited or at least finite storage capacity and I was concerned, if I tried to take advantage of the ability to attach relevant documents/files to various tasks/milestones, I would run into capacity constraints.

Hyper Plan, recommended by OP, is cheap, but it also looks pretty IMO “nasty” too.

A couple of others seen online (which I have not tried) are subscription based and after a year or two start to get into the expensive territory too:

I’m interested to see if some better solution is available.

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I’ve done some of that in AeonTimeline. Big plus for me is that it plays well with Scrivener so I can use that to use the outline from Aeon Timeline to make the Scrivener sections that contain the project details and support material for the longer project. That in turn can be summarized into Omnifocus as individual projects for the major pieces of the overall project. I can use Scrivener to lik as references or embed additional external data sources as well.

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Which makes it easy. For big projects, I stick to MS Project.

Smaller stuff:

  • I have MS Project, so some go into that
  • A lot goes into OmniFocus. Project with several sub-tasks, with due dates (or not) are easy to manage there
  • I tried many project-management applications (Merlin, OmniPlan, OpenProj) and for simple projects (1 resource, no costs), they all fit the bill. It just comes down to personal preference. Since visual representation is important to you, pick the one that has the look you need.
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I use QuickPlan.
Simple, straightforward, iOS app. Integration with other apps needs more work, but it’s the most compatible with my brain. I also use OmniFocus extensively for each project in details (tasks, due dates…), and Calendar for scheduled items. I wish one app had it all in a way that made sens to me, but I haven’t found it yet. I tried Pagico, which might be worth a try as well, but I found the interface too confusing/distracting.

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