I spent the morning today documenting the practice development activities for Acquia services. I started out working in Project X which I decided to try after seeing the icon in Andrew’s dock. It turned out to be a terrible time to try a new tool, since the ideas were coming too fast and I was handicapped by the learning curve. I thought of switching back to OmniPlan, which I’ve been using since it came out.
As I started down that path, it hit me that it wasn’t learning a new application that was the problem (though I’m sure it didn’t help). It was the structure I was working in. The ideas weren’t coming to be in a hierarchy, but I was trying to record them that way. Jumping around a Gantt chart or even the Network View in Project X just wasn’t working out. I needed to move back a level and get all the ideas down, then start putting them into a more formal structure. Time for a Mind Map!
I fired up NovaMind and started mapping. I quickly mapped out the activities for the project was ready to jump back into one of the project management tools in order to elaborate them and add estimates, etc. Here I faced a couple of challenges. I wanted the real estate of my external monitor to work on the project plan, but also needed it to view the Mind Map. On top of that, I didn’t really want to re-enter all of the project activities.
From Novamind, I could export OPML, which I thought OmniPlan was able to import. The trial of Project X could wait if I could save myself the data entry. Unfortunately, even the outline experts at Omni hadn’t added that feature yet. What they did add is OmniOutliner import. I bounced the file through OmniOutliner Pro and dropped back into OmniPlan to fill in task details. An hour or so later and the plan was complete.
