

Ask HN: What do you *not* like about Basecamp (or your pm software)? - imakeapps


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thesash
Interesting, was just thinking about this after watching Asana's demo recently

General PM software gripes (jira, project, pivotal tracker):

1\. lack of keyboard shortcuts: have to use mouse _way_ too much. org-mode is
so much more intuitive and efficient for task management once learned but
lacks collaborations and no one wants to put in the time to learn it.

2\. Difficult to get a clear picture of the overall status of projects.
Project managers have to spend a lot of time gathering status updates and
creating reports because we use so many different tools, and the built-in
reporting generally sucks.

3\. Lack of intuitive structure within data. An ideal PM platform would
structure information in an intuitive way that to make it discoverable by
people working on peripherally related projects.

Specific gripes w/Basecamp:

1\. Don't get notifications when clients upload files, only when they post
messages (they often don't understand the difference)

2\. Checkboxes to send out email notifications are not checked by default for
new messages. Clients _always_ forget to do this, even when we remind them,
and then wonder why we don't respond right away.

3\. Refusal to use gantt charts. I get that 37signals has a philosophical
objection to dependancies and detailed timelines in PM, but sometimes a gantt
chart is the best way to visually display a project timeline, especially if
certain milestones are missed and impact the rest of the project.

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niketdesai
Agree w/ Abinoda - I think the one feature I would like is extreme search-
ability (check out Remember the Milk). Since I have quite a few tasks, of
varying importance, due dates, milestones, and across features it's hard to
literally figure out what I should be working on.

I think Remember the Milk has a decent solution for search, but obviously it's
not nearly as complete as Basecamp.

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slater
Thirding the "too much noise" comment. It seems BC is a system that lends
itself _too_ well to almost-IRC-style posting of comments. Couple that with
managers that might not be used to being concise and to the point in what they
write, and you have hundreds of messages to sift through, which seems counter
to what BC is supposed to help you with - making managing projects easier.

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ryanjm
When jumping on a new project I want to read through all the messages, but
there isn't a next/prev button. You have to go back to the messages index page
in order to get to the next one (including finding you place). And some of
their pages take awhile to load.

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abinoda
Generally speaking (Basecamp user here), I feel like there's too much noise
and it's difficult for me to focus and navigate through what I need to get
done daily.

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jmartin
I think adding a 'Prioritize' feature would be very useful and beneficial.
That way you can 'rank' your tasks and sort through them on a number based
system.

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nathanbarry
You can order tasks and to-do lists so doesn't that meet the needs? First task
is most important, last is the least.

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rvorm
it can get a little hectic when a lot of feedback is coming in and attempting
to find a certain message/file can be cumbersome, if(most often you do) you
have a lot of projects you are working on at once. Also I am not sure how it
would work, but some sort of way to divide up long term projects and short
term projects if that was known.

