I know all about using Omnifocus to run projects and have done that for years. However as I take on more projects and responsibility for my team’s projects I often crave a project summary.
How do people keep the project status or summary available and up to date? When the boss asks about the status of the Johnson project how do you pull that Data. Surely all OF has is the next action which is part of the story. But what price did you quote and for how many widgets. What date do they need the widgets? I think a good project summary should have all of this available at all times.
I’d appreciate any advice on how others keep this summary up to date as well as keeping next actions up to date.
I’m iOS only (and windows at work - yuck!). I want to stay on iOS.
At work for project documentation like that we’re using Notepad++, VIM on the command line, or our IDEs and formatting things in Markdown. It’s generally just notes but it can go into version control along with the application (useful to see who changed what and when, and hopefully the commit message says why). We also have powerpoint slides we’re required to keep up to date but they don’t usually have the information we need in them (they’re very high level).
For my personal projects I’m keeping things in DevonThink along with any other reference material for the project, this allows me to use whatever format I like, and I can keep it on all of my devices (plus I can sync any work DBs with our work OwnCloud via WebDAV!).
On macOS, you can find various AppleScripts posted on the OF that will generate summaries across the OF database. Until (if ever) such scripts are converted to the iOS script format, you are out of luck.
In any case, I don’t use OF to track at a level that would generate a Project Summary. I work in Curio with Kanban boards and Project Summary Templates that have content that itself links back (and forth) with OF.
For smaller projects I keep the summary up to date in OF in the note about that project. For larger ones I keep a summary note in DEVONThink that has the milestones and current status in it. In fact often there are multiple things in the project folder in DT, milestones, billing details, future actions, resources needed or used etc.
Thanks guys. I shall continue to play with ideas. My initial idea was to use the project note in OF (and maybe I just need more rigor) but I just couldn’t seem to make it work.
I have so many projects that I need a quick view with key info to hand. I’ve also mind mapped a fair amount with iThoughts (love it) and that’s maybe my other main option.