This is my home on the internet, welcome.
Recently, a company I work for started using Basecamp internally for project management across its network of sites. I’ve heard a lot of good about Basecamp (and all of 37signals other products for that matter), but I’ve never actually used any of them before, I work solo most of the time, and it’s not worth it to invest in adapting my workflow to include one of them. But, when my employer started using it I figured I’d dive in and see once and for all what all the hubbub was about.
To be honest, I’m very satisfied with everything. Basecamp is just as easy to use as everyone said it is, and looks really good, and it makes communication so much easier than email. To really give an idea of how things have improved, I’ll detail one of the “projects” we have that I’m actively involved with.
DyeStat has a new(ish) stats database called TFX, it works great and is a blessing to those of us that were using the old system to input track and field meet results. I started working with the system and those of us that were inputting meets collaborated via email about what meets we were inputting so we wouldn’t step on each other’s toes, what important upgrades were made to the system, and what tasks were relegated to whom. Naturally, with 6-7 people working most of the day, there was quite a bit of email traffic going around.
Now that we’ve got Basecamp in place, we’re starting to use it more to send out notices to the whole group about what is being done. The To-Do feature is awesome because it’s more efficient than plain email (although it sends notification via email, which doesn’t clear up too much traffic), and it gives us a sense that things are actually getting done. Right now, it’s still less-used than it should be, and there’s a lot we can do internally to try and use it more. But for having it for two weeks, it’s been a complete blessing and it really helps to have it in place.
Basecamp itself is a very powerful system, and with the plugin architecture there are tons of other services and applications that work with Basecamp. Unfortunately the one application I would like to see that I can’t seem to find is something like PackRat but for Basecamp instead of Backpack. If I’ve just missed it and you know of one, please let me know.
Overall, I’d definitely recommend Basecamp for anyone that needs to work on a project with two or more people, although if you’re going solo, it could work, but it’s not really meant for a one-man setup, Backpack is probably more in line for that, but I can’t vouch for it as I haven’t used it myself.
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