6/26/11 Update: Our company internal "How To Basecamp" instructions now posted by user request.
We've been power Basecamp users for several years. Basecamp is a minimalist-style project management system created by 37 Signals. While Basecamp has had its shortfalls, my view has traditionally been that Basecamp is much like democracy: It may not be perfect, but it's the best thing out there.
Recently, though, our company's internal communication needs have been causing Basecamp to creak and groan under the weight of larger-scale use. Employees have started to complain, and they're right: The way we're using Basecamp hasn't been ideal.
I've taken the initiative of evaluating Basecamp vs. other tools for our company, and as part of that role I'm going to publicize the main gripes we have about Basecamp to see if anyone out there has suggestions or best-practices to help us make good decisions for growth.
I'll also send this blog directly to the folks at Basecamp, but I'm not expecting much: 37 Signals is typically not super interested in listening to customer feedback unless it's on their terms. If I do get any responses from them, I'll post them in the comments section below.
In this post I'll lay out several main points:
What we love about Basecamp:
Basecamp is in many ways a magical tool. We first fell in love with it when doing projects with external partners. We've used it with partners ranging from Microsoft and other Fortune 500 clients to local design firms. The main thing Basecamp does well is offer relief from email-based project management: Everything gets put into a web app with "just enough" functionality without being overbearing, and email can still be used to get alerts and respond to threads. It balances the use of email well, while removing the main problems email presents, like the lack of a threaded history across all participants over multiple messages, the lack of accountability and tasking and difficulty creating knowledge repositories.
Jason Fried and the other folks at 37 Signals also obviously put just as much thought into what features not to include as those they do include. For example, back in 2005 Jason wrote on a blog "We all have ideologies. Yours includes an absolute necessity for Gantt charts. Ours doesn't. We just have different opinions of what is required for good project management." And that's fine with me -- most software is so feature rich users have no idea where to start and never use most of the functionality. 37 Signals definitely does a great job of revealing functionality over time when the user is ready to utilize it. I'm also a heavy Highrise user and this is apparent in Highrise as well.
So let me be clear: What I am asking for is not necessarily an increase in features. In fact, I don't know what the answers are to the issues we're having. What I do hope, however, is that folks at companies like 37 Signals can re-think their systems based on some of the frustrations we're having and present solutions to these problems.
Problems we're seeing with our use of Basecamp
I am wording the issues we're having with Basecamp as "our use of Basecamp" on purpose: It's become obvious to me that our company staff (myself included) are not well trained on the use of Basecamp. We're not disciplined with the tool, and that's causing problems. Some might argue that users shouldn't need to be trained if the tool is good, and at some level that's probably true, but at this point I'm expecting that no matter what tool we end up using, we're going to have to implement a "best practices" guide at the very least, and possibly institutionalize a level of discipline in using the tool that we don't have today.
So with that in mind, here's our list of specific issues, ordered by pain level:
Searching for content is difficult and inconsistent. As you can see from the screenshot at left, we are putting a lot of content into basecamp. Each bubble shows the number of comments attached to that task. We're often getting to the point where items have 30+ comments in them, with some topping 100. Basecamp's search functionality is very limited -- it's picky about how search terms are entered, and when it returns results, it vomits up a long list of items, with messages, to-do's, milestones, comments and media all intermingled. We've resulted to trying to memorize keywords from posts to find them later, and in some cases even putting nonsensical words into the post so we can do keyword searches for that content later. (what does the word "flamingo" have to do with the project? Nothing, except that it's an easy word to search for later!)
There is an option box on the right side where a user can search for items only assigned to them (or find tasks that are assigned to, say, anyone) but get this: If you want to search across all projects for tasks assigned to anyone, you can't do it. In Basecamp's Dashboard view, the search for "anyone" is only for tasks not assigned to anyone, i.e., unassigned tasks, while in a project view it's what you'd expect: Anyone means anyone. Not being able to see a macro view of all tasks assigned to all users is a vexing issue with Basecamp.
No auto-save. This is another issue that just drives me up the wall. When you type content into text boxes in Basecamp, you lose it if you close the page. There have been many times I've written notes in a to-do and then lost the content. This is especially difficult because Firefox's private-browsing keyboard shortcut is just one key away from the "switch between tabs" keyboard shortcut, and Firefox closes and re-opens all tabs when you enter private browsing, so whenever I accidentally hit that key, I lose everything I've written but not saved in Basecamp.
Messages and To-Do's work differently. I don't know why Basecamp implemented messages and to-do's differently, but the fact that they did has made messages unusable for us. For example, when I write a message the image at left is what I see. I can checkmark certain user's names to decide who should receive an email notification about the message. So far, so good.
But get this: If I want to post a follow-up comment about the message, I can't change who gets pinged! Here's what it looks like. (Really astute Basecamp users might point out that technically you can hit an "edit" button in the message to change who gets pinged, but that doesn't count: Most users will never find that, and it's kludgy to use even if you do know about it).
To-do's, on the other hand, work differently. Every time you make a comment, you can check off the names of the people you want to receive that comment. This is critical. Being able to select people for email notifications cuts down on "email comment spam."
This difference in message vs. comment functionality has caused us to hack Basecamp: We have a specific to-do list for messages, so we can use the to-do system to post messages to each other. But this hack is sub-optimal because it clutters up our to-do's, and we lose the value of the to-do list bucket naming convention.
There's a related issue here, too: When users get an email comment notification and hit 'reply,' every user who was originally pinged gets that reply. It's like hitting the 'reply to all' button with a bunch of people in the cc line, which I've blogged about before as being an indication of terrible email etiquette. The only way around this issue currently is to log into the Basecamp page and un-check certain names when you reply with a comment. I'm not sure exactly how this behavior can be improved, but what I do know for sure is that when someone hits reply in an email comment notification, it shouldn't automatically go back out to everyone who was originally pinged.
No logging history in to-do's. We have one employee that consistently re-dates to-do's. I wish I had a trail of when the task was originally due so we could have conversations around that issue. Currently, there's no history of due date changes in the task. This would be a very easy problem to fix -- any changes could just be logged as a comment in the task history, or shown on the right side of the task, or similar. It would be really handy to know who changed a due date, when the change was made, and what the previous due date was. While we're on the topic of logging, I'd really like the ability to see who was notified of each comment made.
It's hard to move tasks between projects, and impossible to move comments between tasks. Basecamp allows us to create separate projects. The way we use this is to create a project in Basecamp anytime we begin a new initiative. But oftentimes, an employee will create a task in the wrong project. Currently, the only way to move that task is via an itsy-bitsy little button titled "move". The problem is, you can only move an entire to-do bucket list. So if you want to move a task to a different project, first you have to make a throw-away to-do bucket list, then move that task into the bucket, the move the bucket over to the other project, then move the task out of that bucket into the correct bucket, and then delete the throw-away bucket. Yuck.
While we're on the topic of tasks, here are two other big gripes: The task owner, task description and due date cannot be changed while in the detail view of the task. Strangely, you have to exit the task to edit the task owner, description or due date.
Secondly, in the dashboard to-do view across all projects, the task owner, due date and description cannot be changed. In fact, you can't even click on the task. Instead, you can only click on the to-do bucket list name. Then, you have to find the task in the bucket (which can be daunting in its own right if you have dozens upon dozens of tasks in a bucket) and only then can you edit those items.
What we're doing to mitigate these problems
Basecamp is growing long in the tooth. It hasn't had a major update in years, and I have to think (hope?) the folks at 37 Signals are aware of most or all of the issues above and are hard at work on an upgrade, like we recently saw for Highrise. Still, I can't base our company's strategy on hope -- especially from a vendor that doesn't communicate with its users on when to expect an update and what functionality it will contain. So, we're starting to explore other options. One very promising one is a new startup called Asana. You can watch a great 51 minute demo video on Asana showcasing its approach to project management. (One note to the Asana folks if you see this: The inability to choose who gets pinged in a "reply" email comment notification appears to be an issue in Asana as well). Overall, the Asana approach looked good. If you know of other Basecamp-like systems, I'd love to hear about them in the comments section.
I'm also creating a best-practices and training document for our company's use of Basecamp. Things like "don't just reply to an email alert. Instead, log into the system and choose who gets pinged in your response" type stuff.
I'll also note that internal company communication has been a difficult issue that even major corporations with huge budgets haven't been able to solve. I used to work at GE, one of the best run big companies in the world, and these issues were much worse there than it is at our 30 employee company. As social media matures in the b2b space, I'm very interested to see what companies like Yammer roll out. And I've written before that lack of communication between people creates some of the world's biggest problems. We're not mind readers, and technology hasn't yet figured out how to help our analog brains leverage digital benefits (although in this blog post I write about how mobile will be way bigger than people think, and will mitigate the analog/digital differences).
I'd love to hear any tips from you in the comments section below, especially if you have best practices, pragmatic tips, or software you've successfully used to improve communication at your company.
But wait, there's more: Feedback from employees. I also asked our employees for their list of gripes with Basecamp, which are as follows for anyone who really wants to dig into this:
Christine writes, "Most of my issues tend to be with navigation and feeling like the experience is not very intuitive. A project management tool designed to keep things organized, laid out, and easy to see should not require so much user training. It should make sense to the user,otherwise it takes up more time than it saves.
Here are some screenshots that illustrate a few of my frustrations, but I will follow up with a video later to further explain my navigation gripes."
"OK, here are two more screenshots that illustrate the same point: that Basecamp doesn't let me see who's been notified of/included in the conversation or original message."
Jerry writes:
1) What do you love about Basecamp?
- Information is recorded and archived for retrieval.
Jason writes:
Will writes:
Nick writes:
I've written before about our challenges using Basecamp as we grow. To me, Basecamp is akin to Democracy: It's not great, but it's the best thing out there. (If anyone knows of better project management solutions, please post them as comments on the other thread -- Basecamp is getting very long in the tooth and while I'm hoping for a significant overhaul, I'd switch to something else if I could find another solution that addressed our pain points, as 37 Signals hasn't given any indication that one is coming.)
In response to a comment on that post, I'm posting below the "How To Basecamp" guide we've created for our employees. This guide was created by Christine, our Wordsmithstress at Socialize, so thank you Christine for putting this together.
Note: there are some videos & screenshots in the internal document we use that are private and aren't in here. I've done my best to replace them with blurred out versions.
About Basecamp:
I've written before about our challenges using Basecamp as we grow. To me, Basecamp is akin to Democracy: It's not great, but it's the best thing out there. (If anyone knows of better project management solutions, please post them as comments on the other thread -- Basecamp is getting very long in the tooth and while I'm hoping for a significant overhaul, I'd switch to something else if I could find another solution that addressed our pain points, as 37 Signals hasn't given any indication that one is coming.) In response to a comment on that post, I'm posting below the "How To Basecamp" guide we've created for our employees. This guide was created by Christine, our Wordsmithstress at Socialize, so thank you Christine for putting this together. Note: there are some videos & screenshots in the internal document we use that are private and aren't in here. I've done my best to replace them with blurred out versions. About Basecamp: Basecamp is a project management tool created by 37signals that creates an accessible digital trail that email can't. There's a bit of a learning curve with Basecamp, but you'll soon get comfortable with the system the more you use it. Once you've made an account, to access Basecamp, you can login at http://[your_domain_here].basecamphq.com. We recommend that you bookmark your to-do page (and choose the timeframe,this week, today, in the past, etc.,that works the best for you). With that bookmark, you'll always enter Basecamp through the view that's most important to you: all the tasks you have to do! Keep in mind that Basecamp will remember your navigation. What does that mean? Well, if you were previously looking at Christine's to-do's for the week, the next time you click on "To-Dos" on the Basecamp navbar, you'll see Christine's to-do's. You can navigate out of this view by changing the parameters in the right hand corner. Keep in mind that Basecamp will also remember your navigation through projects. To switch out of a certain project, you can click on "Switch to a different project" to change project views or head back to the dashboard to shake it clean (y'know, like an Etch A Sketch). Organization: Sometimes the terminology can be a bit confusing. Here's a rundown of Basecamp's different levels of organization. Dashboard: The bird's-eye view of Basecamp. From here you can see what everyone is working on and access a list of projects you're privy to (right-hand column). Keep in mind that your activity will show up on the dashboard view, so people will be able to see your comments and such. Projects: Sometimes pertaining to a specific department, projects are a high-level view of the big columns that prop up Socialize, Inc. Since these often coincide with the organization of the company itself, they should be created sparingly,think of projects as very broad and large-scale. Milestones (now part of the 'Calendar' tab): A mid-level view of department goals. These are what we'd call "projects" outside of the Basecamp world. For example, an in-house Socialized app launch would be a milestone. Every milestone should have a due-date and an owner, even if the due-date is an arbitrary date two years out. To-Do Lists ("Buckets"): A lower level view that breaks down what needs to happen in order for us to reach our milestones. If we're launching the Socialized app, one bucket could be "Generate Buzz." To-Dos (these live inside the To-Do List buckets): The micro view, all the little steps you need to accomplish on a (usually) day-to-day basis. A to-do can only be assigned to one person as a time. Under the bucket "Generate Buzz," we might task Jeremia with demo-ing our Socialized app at a tech schmoozing event. To-Do's 101 To-do's are the building blocks of Basecamp's project management system,these are your day-to-day tasks. If you would like someone else to take on a task, you must create a to-do for them. The task creator is responsible for making sure the task is created properly. The to-do must fulfill the three following requirements: (1) it is a separate to-do (not a comment in another to-do/task), (2) it has an owner (the person responsible for accomplishing the task), and (3) it has a due date. If you task someone in a comment thread of anothe rto-do, they will not be able to find this task under their to-do list. Create a separate to-do (and even link the original conversation) so that they can easily find the task. To create a to-do, you must be within the desired project. From the dashboard, find the appropriate parent project. From this page you can either add a to-do to an existing to-do list or create a new list as the to-do's home. Sometimes, a task is ongoing and has no real due date. In this case, the task can become a to-do list or it can be labeled as ongoing (e.g. "[O]" as a type of recognizable nomenclature). Try not to use the messages functionality, as for some reason Basecamp implemented messages in a way that doesn't allow people to be added/removed in later comment threads-- very annlying. Ideally, you want to-do's to be both measurable and actionable. Meaning that it's hard to measure the success and endpoint of a to-do like "comment on blogs",a more quantitative to-do would read "comment on 5 blogs" and be dated for a week away. It's possible to hack the system a little bit. Basecamp is great for managing various deadlines and tasks, but sometimes you want a repository for suggestions or ideas. 37signals offers other tools for this purpose (like Campfire), but you can manipulate Basecamp for this purpose as well. Create and designate a to-do list for messages and ideas. As these items become actionable, they can be dragged into a different list to become real to-do's with owners and dates. Tl;dr? Here's the basic gist: 1. Task creators are responsible for assigning the to-do on Basecamp. 2. Don't task someone in a comment. 3. All to-do's need a owner and a date. 4. Don't use the messages functionality. Searching It can be hard to search on Basecamp, and there's no advanced search option/filters either. This video is an overview of searching (spoiler alert: use shortcut Cmd+F to help you find the keyword in question).We suggest searching through projects (rather than across all of Basecamp) to narrow down your scope. And, you know, you can always admit defeat and just search through your email as well since Basecamp will always email you when you've been tasked or included in a comment. Tips and Tricks If you're using Google Apps, add their Google ShortLink Labs feature so you can make short links (e.g. "go.getsocialize.com/mother" to access The Mother) to frequently used Basecamp buckets, to-dos, etc. "Tag" a bucket or to-do with unique keywords to facilitate searching. For example, tag a website-related task with "Charlotte" (get it,Charlotte's Web?) so that you can search for that keyword rather than the ubiquitous "website." When something is marked "private" in Basecamp it means that it's private to your company (i.e. ALL of Socialize, Inc. employees). It does NOT mean it is private to only the people active/included in the bucket list. Tired of checking off 5 people's names every time you make a new comment on a task? Create an email distro list for that team and grant Basecamp access to that email address. Keep in mind, though, that tasks should be assigned to individuals and never to a distro list. FAQs If a milestone has a due date, then does every task also need to have a due date? Or if a task doesn't have a due date, but is in a task list that has a related milestone, do we just assume the corresponding task is due when the milestone is due? Every task needs a due date. Why? Tasks are the little steps we take to reach a specific milestone. Sometimes, tasks need to be completed in a certain order. Because Basecamp offers several levels of organization, you may see or access the task without seeing the milestone due date. Adding that due date will ensure that you can keep yourself accountable to getting the task done on time. Do you have other tips on "How To Baescamp?" Please post them as comments below. I'm especially interested in any 3rd party services that address some of the main pain points we've been having.
Sue is 37 weeks pregnant, so we're spending our weekends really getting our ducks in a row.
Since Sue and I come from the tech world, it's an easy leap for us to use geeky tools to plan for our birth.
One example is Basecamp, a project management tool we use for work projects. Although I've written about my pains using Basecamp over on my tech blog in the past (http://go.DanielOdio.com/basecamp) , it continues to be the best lightweight & effective project management tool we've found.
So, we figured, why not use it to plan our birth?
Here's a screenshot of what our Basecamp birth project looks like, with some notes: