Ben Allfree :: Painless Programming

I signed up for Basecamp yesterday and plugged in all my clients and projects. The sentiment was well received, but logistical problems started immediately.

Good:

* Easy to comment on to-do items, milestones, and general engage in general discussion
* Easy to participate in discussion via email

Bad:

* Too many ways to comment, and not at all clear as to which comments supersede others
* Easy to become confused by all the email that gets echoed out to you
* Impossible to glance at incoming emails on the iPhone – the subject line is prefixed with your Basecamp company name and that takes up the whole space. You can’t see what any of the subjects are about.
* No easy way to translate discussion points into action items on to-do lists
* No way to propose a milestone and to-do list to get a client’s approval before starting

Basically, the pattern I see is that the Basecamp tool itself is easy to use for what it does, but that I’m finding its process to be too loose to control the variables we have.

We’re considering backing off and just using it to publish and share approved milestones and to-do lists rather than trying to use it for project planning too.