Well, it was far too long of a time from the last post to this one. I planned on writing the followup to my previous article the next day. Oops! I truly do enjoy Basecamp much more than I am frustrated by it. Now that the blog has grown a bit stale, I’m afraid I may have given the wrong impressioin. I’m here to set the record straight, so, here it goes… again…

The Blessing

1. RSS-A-Plenty

The RSS integration is very useful, in fact, I would say it is necessary to truly enjoy the power of this application. Whenever there is a change to our BaseCamp account with a new milestone, status change, file uploaded… I am alerted via RSS. I use the built in Safari reader and it works great. It even does a nice job of filtering per individual or by project based on search queries. When some other individuals here at Pop Art expressed frustration over not having visibility into who actually checked off milestones, I was amazed to see that the RSS feed displayed that information and more. There is no field or status message when you log into BaseCamp, but if you track the RSS feed, it not only shows who the milestone is assigned to, but also who it was authored by and who completed it or checked it off. Very useful. I would think that using BaseCamp without a decent RSS reader is truly experiencing only half the product.

2. A Little Dash of This, A Little Dash of That

The dashboard view, for all projects and for individual projects is nice. It is easy to understand latest activity and the organization of the different functions of BaseCamp. There is little client training needed with understanding BaseCamp as compared to other project site tools I’ve used in the past. The minimal features make it easy to understand. It is more like an iPod and less like a tradition 6 piece home entertainment center.

3. Getting It Right with WriteBoards

WriteBoards are incredible. They are like one page Wikis. They have a simple syntax that is very easy to learn and the instructions are always accessible. The versioning is simple and powerful with easy to view changes across time. It is also relatively easy to link writeboards together. We have used this on our team to prototype out site maps. We used to create them in Illustrator and the WriteBoard approach is SOOOoooo much easier. It has dramatically reduced our time in generating sitemaps for site architecture decisions and clients have enjoyed getting in there too and making edits and tweaks. Our CSS guru, Ryan Parr, has done a nice job making a stylesheet to transform the writeboard into a more traditional looking style sheet. I’m so glad we are out of Illustrator. This alone has made BaseCamp a killer app for our team.

4. Piles of Files

The file sharing area of BaseCamp is very handy. Before BaseCamp, email or DropSend was the only way to go. Now with BaseCamp, sharing files with contractors and clients is very easy and straightforward. Little touches to the interface like app icons and refresh file links make it very easy and rewarding to use. Not a ton of features, but all the right ones.

5. All Projects Under One Roof

It is so nice to be able to have a dashboard that combines all projects. When I have meetings with team, I just print out the dashboard and we review upcoming milestones. Before, each team member would have to bring their own milestone list for each project and it was hard to see who was working on what or what committments we had made as a team. If I were to set it up again, I would have put each department in the company under its own Company category. It would make it easier to see dept views, not just company and individual.

6. Very Inviting

The company/people section is very well done. It is easy to see all available resources in the system, which ones are on an individual project, and to quickly set up a new person on a project or projects. With a few clicks, a new account can be set up and an invite sent out.

7. Behavior Modification

BaseCamp saved our skin when we embarked on a crazy project where we designed 24 sites in 30 weeks. It was an ambitious project and we needed to be able to see what upcoming milestones were across all 24 sites. Without BaseCamp, we probably would have become very frustrated and confused. Granted, it was a pain for the project manager to manage all of those dates in a web application, but it was very much appreciated. Other project managers in our company have also used BaseCamp with varying degrees of success. Many have come to despise it or find it too simple and web based. When I see email still being used as the primary way to communicate and send around files, I think how simple and powerful this web app is and how clients who were introduced to it, rather enjoyed it. To be honest, I was hoping it was going to help change how we worked as a team, bringing us closer to the project and the client. The biggest mistake made was to agree to use it as a replacement for our old ticketing system. BaseCamp is not good at ticketing or issue tracking. Even thought it might not have been the organizational success I was hoping for, I still really enjoy it. I don’t know if we will stick with BaseCamp as an organization, but if we do decide to replace it, I hope the next tool is just as powerful with its simplicity.