

Bitching About Basecamp - daryn
http://blog.sentientmonkey.com/post/708447989/bitching-about-basecamp

======
tptacek
The author of this post doesn't want Basecamp. He wants something that does
fine-grained project management. I'm sure Zoho ( _or, late edit, Pivotal
Tracker_ ) does something closer to what he needs.

It's one thing to complain that Basecamp is too drag-and-drop. But _not_
having detailed schedule management features is practically Basecamp's calling
card. _He's using it wrong_.

Basecamp is awesome when your workflow is "generate some kind of file, post
it, talk about it, repeat". A surprising number of projects boil down to that.
For that workflow, Basecamp is the best thing I've used. For any other
workflow, look elsewhere.

~~~
swindsor
I agree - I don't think I want Basecamp. But I don't need Zoho either. My
point was that Basecamp is missing a few (very small) features that would take
it from "Ok" to "Awesome". Even though this may be against much of the 37
signals philosophy of keeping things simple and lean.

I thought Basecamp is also designed to solve the distributed project
management problem in a simple, easy way. I like the appoach, but the
Deadline/Time tracking doesn't work for me in it's current implementation.

~~~
tptacek
No, Basecamp is missing a couple "small" features that would take it from "Ok
for 'swindsor" to Zoho.

Seriously. Not kidding. You want a different app. Basecamp don't want you.
There's nothing wrong with that. Or you.

~~~
swindsor
I think I'm okay if Basecamp doesn't want me. Really, it's a product, and if
it doesn't fit my needs, I'll move on. But I'm sure I'm not the only one. But
really, it's up to 37Signals to listen to the feedback or keep the product as
is. Keeping it as is will keep their market share low, and ultimately make
them less money. But I might be missing the point.

~~~
tptacek
Of course you're not the only one. There are literally tens of thousands of
professionals like you that are not a good match for Basecamp. It's perfectly
normal. Basecamp only works for a tiny fraction of what I do.

One of the reasons why 37signals has managed to be so successful with so
little code and so few team members is that they are extremely disciplined
about what customers they cater to. Catering to people like you and me might
kill them.

Like 'nexneo said upthread, you want Pivotal Tracker.

------
marknutter
The OP is truly missing the point of Basecamp, and some of the points don't
make that much sense if I'm reading them correctly:

"No time estimates" - if you upgrade to the next highest version of Basecamp
you will get time tracking functionality for all tasks, which would work just
fine for basic time estimation. If you don't want to upgrade to the next
highest version, then just put your estimate for the time a task will take
into the comments for that task. The idea is to figure out a way to make this
simple system work for you, and that's why they can cast such a wide net to so
many different types of industries without catering to them specifically.

"Tasks have no correlation to Milestones" - this is not true, but probably
mentioned because of the OP's brief interaction with the app. When you create
a todo list you can choose which milestone it relates to. You can even set it
to complete that milestone when all the todos have been checked off.

"Too much Drag & Drop" - this point is really pretty nit-picky and more a
matter of personal preference. I don't claim to be a UI expert, but I could
make equally compelling arguments as to why the drag and drop functionality
they have in place would be better than up and down arrows.

"Why 6 categories of messages?" - This one is just laziness on the OP's part.
Right at the bottom of the messages dropdown menu you will notice an "-- Add
New Category --" option which allows you to customize categories. You can also
globally customize categories so that they show up for other projects too.

I'm really surprised this post hit the front page of HN. It iss a cursory
glance at a piece of software and a seemingly offhand damning of it. I
wouldn't doubt that a few of these up votes came from people just reading the
headline and having a general feeling of bitterness towards 37signals, for
whatever reason. There's been a spate of anti-37signals posts over at
reddit.com/r/web_design too so it wouldn't surprise me.

Basecamp is great software because it's extremely simple. They purposely keep
the feature-set small and are very opinionated about how they do things. The
result is a very solid tool that isn't bloated and can fit many different
niches because of its accessibility. Before they came around you were stuck
with overly complicated all-things-to-all-people solutions. Kind of like Rails
and Apple products...

------
mgkimsal
One of the issues I've seen with Basecamp is that it's bought quite a lot -
I've done contracting work for a number of companies large and small in my
area, and _most_ of them had used basecamp in the past or were still paying
for it when I got there. Problem was, no one was using it 'right'. Based on
the comments here, and other critiques I've read, it seems to be a good fit to
a _far_ smaller group of orgs than people think (especially the people who buy
it). They end up beating their heads against the wall, or abandoning web-based
PM tools altogether - "well, we tried the leader and it doesn't work for us -
we're too unique and special, so we'll just keep doing everything on paper"
(not actual words, but the gist I've heard before).

So 37S ends up being phenomenal marketers that have a service many people want
to buy, but more people buy it than can get real value out of it because it
wasn't built for their needs in the first place.

Certainly 37S is not ultimately responsible for people continuing to pay for
something that doesn't work, but they do a pretty good sales job via word-of-
mouth evangelism, even when it's a poor fit for an org's needs. Maybe too
good?

------
armandososa
I think the real value proposition from Basecamp is that it replaces e-mail.
Some of us don't really need all that fancy stuff, so much that we may even
use e-mail to manage our projects (I still do use e-mail when it's something
very small).

So Basecamp does not try to solve everything, it's just the best thing after
e-mail.

~~~
swindsor
That I really agree with. It's a great group collaboration tool, and a much
better replacement that email.

But for task management, it still isn't better than a shared Google
Spreadsheet, which is weird to me.

------
danshapiro
I get 37S's philosophy, and I thank them for being so transparent about their
goals, so that I can be sure never to use one of their products.

Entrepreneurial companies, by their very nature, change. It's hard for me to
fathom why a startup would build their software development process around a
tool optimized for inflexibility, no matter how enticing, when that might
inhibit their ability to fix something broken about their business later.

------
daveschappell
I've long been a fan of 'Getting Real' and now 'Rework' but I'm pretty sure
I'm not their target customer -- I've found all of their products lacking in
functionality. And, it just doesn't seem like they're listening to my customer
type, or my problems. So, I've just relented and have assumed that I'm not
their target, and they they're doing an awesome job with whoever their actual
customer target is!

~~~
tptacek
For the record, and yes I'm repeating myself:

Their actual customers are service practices (designers, copywriters, event
planners, marketing organizations, business consultants) whose workflow
consists of "1. discuss some kind of file, 2. create some kind of file, 3.
upload file, 4. discuss file, 5. goto 1". For that workflow, it's great.

It does _not_ work for projects with multiple independently timeboxed steps,
or for projects that have complex dependencies. The dependencies need to work
like "step 2 depends on file from step 1; step 3 depends on files from step
2".

~~~
daveschappell
I might be repeating myself too, but go check out who they market themselves
to, and how they describe their product:

<http://basecamphq.com/buzz>

~~~
tptacek
I really don't understand what you're trying to get at. I'm telling you what
Basecamp works well for, and what I believe it was designed to do. You're
telling me that you disagree with the marketing copy on their website. I
didn't write that marketing copy, and I'm not interested in critiquing it.

Regardless of how your mental mapping of their marketing copy works, they've
been completely explicit about the fact that Basecamp is _not_ designed for
people who want fine-grained schedule-based management. They've written
extremely popular blog posts about why they think that kind of project
management is evil. You can agree or disagree with that (I do both), but you
can't tell them they have to add features they don't want to add just because
you have a different definition of "project management".

~~~
swindsor
I think my issue is that I totally agree that fine-grained project management
is evil, meetings suck, I read the books, listen to podcasts, drink the kool-
aid, etc.

But, Basecamp is a project management tool. It allows you to track tasks (and
due-dates), and milestones. I don't care about task dependancies, or gannt
charts.

I do care about agile development. I do need to see the status of my project
in an aggregate way (are we close yet?) Even understanding that estimates are
wild guesses, task-level timeboxing is better than working backwards from
dates. I can't image the due-date feature working well except for in some very
narrow circumstances.

I guess overall if my definition is "project management" is different, then
wouldn't they want their product to work to handle users like me? Or not, and
that's okay. I'm just saying that I'm cut out of the niche of users they are
looking for, whether it be intentional or not.

~~~
tptacek
I don't think Basecamp is a particularly good way to manage agile software
development projects, or really software development projects of _any_ kind,
and especially not software development projects that have multiple
cooperating team members.

Like the commenter downthread said, you want Pivotal Tracker, not Basecamp.

------
daryn
For as much as we all love 37s and their preaching, Scott brings up some very
valid points about their actual products outside of their books and brand.

~~~
run4yourlives
In that they don't solve everyone's problems? I don't think 37S ever
proclaimed to do this.

~~~
daveschappell
I disagree -- their value proposition on their BasecampHQ homepage says "the
leading web-based project collaboration tool". That sounds like it should be
pretty generic, and applicable to many different use cases, and definitely to
the small web development startup, right?

~~~
run4yourlives
Coke says it's the leading soft drink. I don't really think it's their issue
if you happen to like Pepsi better.

The fact that 55% (or whatever) of the market is using the tool, but you
aren't part of that 55% makes the claim accurate and the tool not right for
you at the same time.

------
cangrande
the biggest thing for me that basecamp is missing is email. I would want to
have a direct integration into my email, so I can set tasks and organize
projects directly from there. I think the likes of producteev and
taskforceapp.com are probably on to something.

