Yeah, not so much…

I’m using Basecamp for day to day project management and while most of it is juicy goodness, there are some areas that I really don’t like it. The “To Do” list is fine, as long as nothing has a due date associated with it. Yes, I know I can associate them with milestones, but they should be MILEstones, not “every foot stones”.

I also am not happy that I can’t have an internal schedule separate than an external schedule. I want to tell my developer that his part needs to be by the end of this week, so I can check it next week, but tell the client that this task will be done next week. How do I hide a task from the client?

It’s a nice system and does many things well, but it needs some time to grow up. It’s still a slacker teenage for now that doesn’t do everything I need it to. Get a hair cut.

Slacker Manager

I mentioned a while back that I was really liking Basecamp. I still am. In that previous review I mentioned using it to collaborate cross-country on a presentation. Well, we kept on collaborating and finished the presentation which was pretty well received. I can’t say that it wouldn’t have happened without Basecamp, but it sure made the whole process easier. For the presentation at least, the best thing was to be able to keep a revision history, with comments, on all our files. We used PowerPoint and MindManager as our main source files and when we updated them, we were able to make a note about what changed, and comment on the notes. Kind of a dumb guy’s SVN, or something.

I’m also still using it to juggle marketing projects at work. I’ve generally got two or three on the burner, with different players on each project. I can use Basecamp as my dashboard to see what’s new and what’s due. It’s been great for uploading proofs and commenting, brainstorming ideas, etc. I make good use of the Milestones feature, but I haven’t really used the To Do lists much. Not sure why…maybe because my role is more of an ‘executive producer’ for these projects and other people are managing the daily stuff and they aren’t using the To Do feature. I dunno. Probably should think a little more about that.

Anyway, still digging it. Anyone else have success stories to share? (I’ve noticed that there are a couple of potential competitors with ActiveCollab and Streber. Haven’t used either because I’m just too pleased with the hosted goodness of Basecamp)

Posted by Conrad Walton in project management software