Here and Back Again — A Basecamp Tale
In February, 2008, I wrote about leaving Basecamp, 37signals’ web-based project-management software.
At the time, I was frustrated by features that were — and, I believe, remain — missing:
- There’s no way to see an overview of all Milestones across projects
- There’s no way for a project manager to see all to-dos assigned to everyone across projects
While these limitations were frustrating, other solutions seemed to offer a way around them, imperfect though they seemed even at the beginning…We tried:
- OmniPlan, OmniFocus and OmniFocus for iPhone (from the Omni Group)
- Things and Things for iPhone (from Cultured Code)
all of which are capable and sophisticated. Things, in particular, was a joy to use. Ultimately, we grew tired of work-arounds designed to imitate true multi-project management (e.g. shoe-horning multiple projects into a single OmniPlan document) and, ultimately couldn’t make them work in a collaborative environment (exporting data to share it is a one-way trip, and adds an unnecessary step).
Silos of project information that aren’t easily shared and updated by the various people involved ultimately proved counter-productive for us, small as we are.
The other broad issue we had with Basecamp was customers pushing back. This ranged from exasperation to hostility:
- “Don’t make me learn more software; I don’t have the time.”
- “Can’t I just email you?”
- “Can I change my password to ‘1234′?”
These aren’t flaws in our customers; they’re busy, they understand email, and they want things to be simple. No one said anything negative about Basecamp; it was that they didn’t want to learn or use anything new. It’s human nature.
But something interesting has happened: Facebook.
Widespread participation in social networks like Facebook and Twitter is melting away resistance to web-based (non-email) communication.
Which brings us back to Basecamp.
We’re doing it differently this time around. We won’t be bringing clients into it unless they ask to be. But we expect more of them to ask to use it.
For now, then, it will be mostly an internal tool. It will be an interesting couple of years. Especially if and when desktop tools like OmniPlan finally get their multi-project, collaborative acts together. The question is whether they can implement these features at all without essentially turning themselves into Basecamp, at least in part.
ravi S Said,
March 24, 2009 @ 4:18 am
I wonder whether you have checked out other project management tools…
DeskAway is one of my favourite tools.
Chris Said,
March 24, 2009 @ 10:02 am
No, I hadn’t heard of DeskAway. I know there are open-source project management tools, too, but I haven’t really looked into those, either.
Tuyen Truong Said,
March 27, 2009 @ 4:20 pm
Hi Chris,
Thanks for sharing your frustrations with Basecamp. If you have some time, you should take a look at TeamWork Live (http://www.teamworklive.com) as I think it may address the issues you have with Basecamp. TeamWork Live has a similar interface to Basecamp but tries to fill in some of the gaps the a lot of users see in Basecamp. In your case, we have an open items report that allows you to see all your milestones and tasks across all of your projects.
We allow users to interact with TeamWork Live (such as adding comments and replying to messages) simply by replying to notification emails so your clients won’t even have to login if they don’t want to. Additionally, we have a Basecamp import tool so you can quickly get set up and see if TeamWork Live will meet your needs. Please take a look and let me know if you have any questions.
Regards,
Tuyen
Christopher Mackay Said,
April 3, 2009 @ 11:15 am
Basecamp seems to have made some changes! Milestones on the Dashboard now includes “Show milestones assigned to: Everyone”, which is great.
Due to what one can only assume are implementation details, To-Do’s have also gotten enhanced filtering options, but they’re inconsistently applied: at the Dashboard, “Show items assigned to: Anyone (unassigned)” is an option along with each individual’s name. Not so useful, but not so bad, either. Within projects, though, there is now a “Show to-dos assigned to: Anyone”, which does exactly what I’ve wanted for ages. The labels are confusing, but the results are wonderful.
Thanks to 37signals for making these changes.