Basecamp

Comments: While there were other, cheaper PM softwares to consider, one of the reasons I started to look at Basecamp is because they are, in a sense, industry leaders. They are constantly publishing books or podcasts about better ways of doing business and that's something their software does.

Pros: Since switching to Basecamp we've seen better communication, collaboration, and better delivery on projects for our marketing team. The way Basecamp delivers information—keeping it all up front and easily accessible—makes it super easy to find out where a project is at at any given time. We've also seen an increase in productivity. People are spending less time trying to figure out what it is they are doing and spending more time getting tasks checked off their list. It has also improved team morale. PM software can be frustrating, but the user interface has made it more fun. While we haven't rolled this out company wide, we are looking forward to it.

Cons: I think there is room to improve the educational components of Basecamp. Based on their customer experience, are there best usage stories? Are there best practices for implementation and usage that we can use? Key piece is communication. There's a lot of choices for where people can submit updates: Campfire, in the task list, in individual tasks. What are the best practices? Someone, please tell me.

Comments: Since we started using Basecamp, our project intake process has become much more organized and it's way easier to see what everyone has on their plate. It's also helped us get approval from key stakeholders since everyone at every step of every project has to-dos assigned to them. I also love the integrations. We sync with Everhour so we can keep track of exactly how long it takes to complete each step of each project, which has helped us become more efficient and also see where we're spending our time.

Pros: I love how intuitive Basecamp is to use and how easy it is to keep track of upcoming projects and set priorities. I'm new to project management and it's been so easy to set up every project and teach new employees how to navigate the system. You can set different projects for different teams and even invite clients to view projects. Plus, you don't have a limited number of seats so everyone in our organization can access it without us needing to purchase anything additional.

Cons: There are too many places to communicate within Basecamp so it's important that you have a clear process. You can comment on an overall project thread, a group and in each individual to-do so sometimes it's hard to tell where a comment is located. However, it does show you which to-dos have comments within them and there are easy-access notifications at the top of your screen at all times so as long as comments are recent, they're easy to find.

Comments: Basecamp felt fun to use and really made us feel that we were optimizing our workflows in terms of assigning tasks and work flows.

Pros: Basecamp's user interface has changed over the years and has become for easier for clients and client facing individuals. Basecamp became a part of a sales pitch in terms of giving access to clients to a platform where we were accessible and there to help them.

Cons: Basecamp has a lot of bells and whistles that are not immediately apparent. We did have to do a little digging under the hood in order to take advantage of some key features!

Comments: There is a distinct before and after Basecamp in our lives. After the implementation, we noticed a distinct improvement, not just in the output, but also in team culture and job satisfaction.
Basecamp helped to clear the mess that project communications were. While we still work a lot of hours, we now streamline it better.

Pros: Centralise all traffic, in-house and with clients.

Cons: It is a single approach to Project Management. The client side could be more developped as well.

Comments: Despite my complaint about Discussions, I REALLY love this product and honestly cant' see how we could keep organized with the complexity of our projects without it. I know there are other products that do similar things in different ways, but you guys hit perfectly on providing exactly the functionality we need without a lot of extra fluff. We use Basecamp B2 BTW and not B3 because we don't need all the additional fluff of B3. We have other products to handle chat (like Skype etc) so there was nothing about B3 that we needed. WE LOVE BASECAMP B2 !!!

Pros: I love the ease of use, and the how it allows us to keep very complex projects organized via the To-dos etc. I love the fact it lets our teams collaborate in a single location and keep everything related to a project organized. (We use Basecamp B2 FYI)

Cons: DISCUSSIONS. If I had a way to turn off the ability to start a new discussion I would. I like the fact the discussion area shows the chronological listing of activities, but I DO NOT like the concept of a discussion. Everything we do in Basecamp is in the TO-DO section because you can assign ownership and due dates. A DISCUSSION on the other hand, cannot be assigned to someone or a date added. Anything we need to discuss, can be done inside a specific TO-DO item and at the point someone needs to take action it can then be assigned to someone for ownership. A discussion without the ability to assign ownership and a time element is Just a bunch of talking and worthless to a business. I'm also continually having customers go out there and open new discussions when they want something instead of opening a to-do because discussions are the first thing they see. If I could turn off the ability to open a new discussion I would. Because of the issue I just mentioned, it would be VERY HELPFUL if there was an easy way to move an item from a DISCUSSION to a TO-DO. That would make it easy to deal with the situation if someone opened a discussion instead of a to-do and also would make logical sense that people are talking about something for a long time (Discussing it) and then when it's time to get off their butt and do something they could move it to a to-do (have the history of the discussion) and assign ownership.