Each spring, just as the buds appear on the trees and the nesting birds fill the world with songs of optimism about the future, the schemes that I have been contemplating all winter begin to show signs of blossoming into actual projects.
Traditionally, I honoured this evolution by getting an elaborate project planner and opening a file for each scheme, delineating the next two or three hundred steps the project requires. As tedious as this is, it gives me something to do while the project sponsors decide whether or not to move forward.
Factually, I rarely used all those elaborate project plans I created because, in the real world, my projects always depend on too many other people with different planning software or they only needed a 'to do' list to be organised. So, this spring I set about to find the perfect, small, shareable and easy-to-use project organiser.
In my search, I discovered two project planning applications that have arrived on the market in the past three months and thus far have drawn more praise than anything that has come before.
As far as sharing goes, it imports and exports Microsoft Project files as well as OmniOutliner and NovaMind Mindmaps. I use OmniOutliner to sequence lists and thus it is a handy mini-planner. But Merlin magically turns your OmniOutliner shopping files into a full-fledged plan with timelines and priorities.
One of its cooler features is an integrated risk management component. Is there an 80 per cent chance that a certain contact will flake out on his or her tasks? Might the talent cost more than originally anticipated? Is there a chance you can't get the materials on time? You can make note of all this in a second with Merlin.