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You say that OmniPlan is best in class, and I am sure it is excellent, but I can't believe it can be better than Merlin, which got me has been the gold standard for this type of software. I would love to know your views on both and see the two compared.

I've had Omniplan since the first betas before the 1.0 release; it's capable, easy to use, and very feature complete, but be warned that by itself it doesn't turn you into a skilled project manager, and it may be overkill for some levels of projects- i.e., you can spend too much time planning compared to working! Not a fault of OmniPlan, just inherent to the genre. I'm using this more now that I have to coordinate activities of several engineers.

I have both OmniPlan and OmniFocus (Getting Things Done task tracker) and have never really dived deeply into either one, but I wonder whether (and how) they interact, either synergistically or not.

I would also love to see this compared to Merlin.... which I'm currently using for PM tasks.

I enjoyed the review but, like others here, I really love to see Omniplan compared to Merlin. Two years ago I chose Merlin for my office (server app, OS X clients app and iPhone/iPad clients) and I never regretted but two years in IT are really a long time.

I saw this when it was being previewed several years ago at MacWorld. It was impressive even then. That said, Ill probably never buy it though because its Mac only. There are simply too many instances where I might need to collaborate with non-Mac using clients.

lynnfredricks, on 06 January 2012 - 09:00 AM, said:

I used OmniPlan a couple years ago when taking a PMI class, collaborating with an all MS Project group. I don't recall a single hiccup. It imported/exported just fine for my needs and had no problems crossing platforms. But to be fair I didn't really have a gigantic project. It's possible that it could drop some things once the more advanced features are invoked.

Also, the only 'con' on this review was that the learning curve can be a bit steep for some users. But our CTO just used it to outline a six-month project and pointed out that the curve isn't so steep if you have any kind of familiarity with Project.

-cp

"you can expect to spend several days, if not a couple of weeks, learning where all the features are and putting them all to good use"

"make large-scale project management as easy as a simple to-do list"

At first glance, these are rather contradictory.

I too would love to see this application compared with Merlin. And I'd also like to hear about any interaction with OmniFocus.

I'd sure appreciate a full review on the various project/time management tools out there. Others remark on Merlin, Omnifocus, and the author mentions Things and TaskPaper. I went hunting for a tool awhile ago, since my retired life seems to have as little time as my professional life did, and came across the name Gantt, apparently an early innovator in this field, and from his name to GanttProject, which I dutifully downloaded and installed; it sits here unused, due to the same problem the author notes about Omniplan: the learning curve is daunting, and, as jonmarsh notes wisely, "you can spend too much time planning compared to working!" Since it would be folly to wait for said review to tackle my problem, I'm nosing around OmniFocus now, having had fine experience with Omni's outline processor, OmniOutliner. Nonetheless, please consider writing that review, and thanks for this article.

I've had OmniPlan too since it was in Beta. What I need most is to be able to set the end date for a project and work back from there. I gradually stopped using OmniPlan because it couldn't do this. I did ask a few times for this to be added. A quick test seems to show that it's still not possible to set a firm end date.

For simple projects, OmniFOCUS is fine, and it's the best to do program out there, especially if you are a GTD person.

lynnfredricks, on 06 January 2012 - 09:00 AM, said:

I'm in a similar position in that as a professional Project Manager I'd love to be able to use this as a replacement for MS Project as I like and use some of Omni's other software and we have a mixed Windows/OS X environment.

Unfortunately although it is improving, compatibility with MS Project is still not 100% (in an albeit quick trial, I found that split tasks in a MS Project 2007 plan didn't import properly) and ultimately this will limit its usefulness to many companies. Even if my company chose to replace all our MS Project licences with OmniPlan, there is still the issue of dealing with clients, all of whom will use MS Project. Throw in pricing which is on a par with MS Project and it becomes even harder to justify.

That said, I'm looking forward to seeing how OnmiPlan for iPad works out, as I can see it being useful for quickly sketching out a timeline with a client or making a quick alteration to a plan while on the move.

Cheers,
Alex

Alex Bentley
Programme Manager
Foolproof Ltd

The dilemma with PM (in truly large projects) remains compatibility. And you do not even have to add a Mac (or iOS device) to the mix to achieve Babylonian standards.

Pretty much every large scale construction project today is managed in Primavera (Windows only and extremely expensive, but to be fair - it does some things that neither MS Project, nor Merlin, nor OmniPlan, nor FTS can do - e.g. optional risk and contract management packages).

Now, due to cost, a lot of people still use old Primavera versions (in the $20 billion project I am currently in, you see everything from P3 to P6). Designers, construction companies, consultants, project managers, contractors... everybody runs different versions and packages. And only a few people have licenses.

Now, you want to manage a sub-project (like e.g. I my IT package within the large project). I can get an MS Project export from the overall PM, but it does rarely ever work. Work hour schedules, currency amounts and sometimes even dates get interpreted wrongly (or reformatted), which makes the verification of the data (more than 114,000 activities) a more lengthy process than copying my relevant milestones by hand every week. And that is what happens in reality, as soon as you have more than one party: manual copying of data to avoid hidden errors (a horror concept).

I have used both, Merlin and OmniPlan. Merlin loses at MS Project import (about 50% of imports fail/abort, while OmniPlan has so far imported everything I threw at it), and the lack of true baselining support (they do show planned vs. actual bars in the gantt chart, but something like a true re-baselining is nowhere to be found). Merlin wins at everything else (usability, printing - something the OmniGroup has always been horrible at, cost-effective sharing packages for small teams, including iPhone/iPad support and an state-of-the-art web/HTML sharing option, better cost and work schedule management, better reporting, integrated document, risk/issue, etc storage and more). For a moderately sized project with no need to exchange PM data with other systems, I would always prefer Merlin, as soon as the project gets larger and there is a need to exchange data with other apps, OmniPlan is clearly ahead.