Loading Profile...
Twitter,
Facebook, or email.
While there are many aspects of legal project management, the most important parts to me are breaking down a project—that is, a case or other specific assignment from a client—into specific tasks, and managing the completion of those tasks over time.
Most importantly, it is necessary to be able to subdivide tasks into sub-tasks. In a civil lawsuit, for example, one of several Level 1 tasks would be Discovery. Level 2 tasks under Discovery would include Depositions, Obtaining Documents, Producing Documents, Propounding Interrogatories, and Answering Interrogatories. Each Level 2 task would typically have 2–6 levels of sub-tasks, with the bottom level being tasks assigned to team members, and with other team members having management responsibility at each level above the bottom one (all Level 1 tasks, and some lower level tasks, would be the responsibly of the lawyer in charge). Large law offices with large staffs (firms, in-house legal departments, government law offices) would have the greatest need for the greatest number of levels. For maximum flexibility, a project management tool like Onit should allow an unlimited number of levels (this can be implemented in XML, similar to an outline structure).
Another aspect to keep in mind is recording dependencies among tasks. This is most obvious in construction projects (where project management was born): excavation must be completed before you pour the foundation, and the foundation must be dry before most other construction can begin. Legal projects have similar dependencies, so there should be a way of each dependent task automatically getting a "green light" when all its prerequisite tasks are completed. Since the critical paths of legal projects are not as complex as those in building an nuclear reactor, this functionality can wait until Version 3, but I think it should be on the drawing board.
On the time management side, a due date is essential but not sufficient. We also need a start date, and a plan for doing the work between the start and due dates. Also, managers need to see the progress being made throughout the work, which means that staff members must be able to report their progress. Waiting until the due date is too late to discover that a task, and therefore the project, is seriously behind schedule.
I’m
excited
-
I’m
really pleased!
Multi-level tasks are already here! Using the just-updated interface, right-clicking on a task and choosing Insert from the context menu creates a "child" task for the task you right-clicked, which is indented one level. It appears that you can create a "child" for a task on any level (I tried it to 13 levels).
If you drag a task up or down the task list (you can do that now!), all its descendants (children, grandchildren, etc.) come with it. Dropping a task onto another task makes the dragged task a child of the dropped-onto task. These give you powerful ways to organize and reorganize the task list into a multi-level outline that suits your particular needs.
Here's a bonus, but for the time being it is for nerds only: HTML character formatting tags work in task names (they probably work elsewhere). I tried bold, italic, underscore, and font color. If you want to apply a formatting attribute to the entire task text, you needn't bother with the ending tag; the effect does not carry forward to subsequent tasks. Someday, Onit can add a user interface for formatting, so civilians can use it too (or maybe that will be a premium feature). However, I would rather have developers concentrate on enhancing the project management functionality, and leave formatting low on enhancement priority list.
Thanks, Onit!Comment -
-
Steven, thank you very much for the reply to your own question. I think I might need to put you on the payroll!
You did discover that our new UI addressed many of the suggestions that you had. And while it is not infinite, we do allow 17 levels of task nesting; we thought that would support 100% of folk's needs.
The most interesting comment from your original post, to me, is about task dependency. I agree that we will need to add that over time. The question is when.... For now, we believe that a calendar view of your tasks, in addition to the date ordered and nested views that already exist, is next on the list. Does that sound right to you?
I am also curious how you are finding the new interface since you were also a user of the old one.-
I agree with you that 17 levels of task nesting should be sufficient for anyone. In the real world, while task dependencies (critical path analysis) are a normal part of project management, it is probably not that important for most legal work. In the legal work I am familiar with, which included heavy duty, big firm cases involving over a million documents and dozens of depositions, task dependencies are still simple enough to be fairly obvious and big firms have gotten along without it (although automated assistance would be a help in the largest cases). Unfortunately, work pressure has prevented me from exercising the new interface as much as I would like to, but it is clearly such a major improvement that it makes Onit an essentially different product than the previous version.
-
-
-
-
EMPLOYEE
