OmniFocus: how to handle delegated projects?

[Fritz58]

I'm managing 8 direct reports. I'd like their projects to be seen as delegated or somehow separated from my projects. I was thinking about OnHold status but that would mix with my Waiting For and Someday projects. Is there any tips for tracking delegated projects in OmniFocus?

[kelstarrising]

One option is to create a folder in Projects called "Projects - Delegated" and store them in there.



You could also track them under your People lists (aka "Agendas" in GTD terms, but OmniFocus calls them People.)

[Oogiem]

I'm managing 8 direct reports. I'd like their projects to be seen as delegated or somehow separated from my projects. I was thinking about OnHold status but that would mix with my Waiting For and Someday projects. Is there any tips for tracking delegated projects in OmniFocus?

I don't have many delegated projects but I made a context for them as well as a separate folder.

[Fritz58]

I think I need to clarify to get the right advice

At the moment the structure in my OF is as follows:

- Work
-- Company A
--- Management
----Administration
-----Introduce business processes
-----Install new reception
-----Order tables for the sales
-----Clean the server room
-----...
----Finance
-----Find a bank with creteria ABC
-----...
----Marketing
----Sales
-----Hire a sales director (*)
...
...

I'm executive director of the company so I set direction and projects to the company directors and track them. Most of the projects (there're 350) are delegated. Though they are on my list with On Hold status (aka Waiting For) as you see above. Among these projects there're some projects that I own myself (marked with *). Usually they are some business development projects in the intitial phase.

When I'm in the doing mode I want to see only my projects and my Waiting Fors, not delegated ones. It would be easy if there were Delegated status in OF. But there isn't. So i need a way to separate my work from the work I just control.

Any ideas?

[speeding]

When I delegate an action to a person, I change the context to 'waiting for'. I have set several contexts and I don't want to change usually. So I change the delegated action's title to 'waiting: John, write the ... report'.

[Fritz58]

Speeding, I delegate a project, not an action. So I don't really interested what action a person makes to complete the delegated project. Omnifocus has no 'Delegated' status for the project just Active and OnHold. I use OnHold for my projects that I do myself, it is used as Waiting for status.

[AE Thanh]

You want to make custom perspectives. Are you familiar with that? If not, my friend and I wrote some posts about it here:

http://www.asianefficiency.com/task-...-perspectives/

I guess there are two ways to go about it:

1. Make a perspective that only shows YOUR projects.
2. Make a perspective that only shows DELEGATED projects.

When you are creating your perspectives, you can select which projects to view. Just a quick example, go to projects. Select 3 projects (hold COMMAND when you click). Now you should see on the right only tasks related to these 3 projects.

In the menubar, go to Perspectives > Save Window As > New Perspective, and give it a name. Now each time you go to that perspective, you only see those 3 projects.

The same idea works for contexts.

In your case, you can use this only only select projects you own or selecting the projects that are delegated.

[mcogilvie]

Speeding, I delegate a project, not an action. So I don't really interested what action a person makes to complete the delegated project. Omnifocus has no 'Delegated' status for the project just Active and OnHold. I use OnHold for my projects that I do myself, it is used as Waiting for status.

If you have NO next actions for a project, it isn't YOUR project, is it? So I would probably have one or more lists of delegated projects, each with a context of either the responsible person or just "delegated" or even "waiting for". You could also have a repeating reminder to "Check status of xyz project with Pat". It's up to you.