Strategy and marketing
Project management is easy
Hello everyone coming from the 37s product blog. We’re really happy to be featured again and I’m sure you’ll get some value from this post, but bear in mind that it was published in 2009 when Basecamp todo items didn’t have due dates. Just sayin’.
I feel a need to let you know just what a disorganised person I am: I have the worst memory and attention span of anyone I know. Ask my mum, girlfriend or friends and they will tell you of their years of frustration. But it’s not my inability to get things done, it’s my inability to actually remember what it is I’m supposed to be doing!
I’m telling you this because, before anything else in this post, what I want to get across is that project management is something that anyone can do. Even me.
Back in February I posted this update on my Twitter page:
Now I want to spend a little more than 140 characters explaining that statement. At the same time I want to give readers an insight into a part of our project management process, with a few tips thrown in along the way.
Basecamp
We use Basecamp at Erskine. The insights and tips I’m going to talk about will be Basecamp specific but I’m sure they can ported to your own way of working.
For a time, as the number of projects and people at Erskine increased and project management became more of a priority, I actually fought hard against Basecamp. Why? Well as a communication tool Basecamp excelled but for task management it seemed to not do quite enough.
For example its inability to include due dates with tasks just seemed wrong. I was one of those people who tried every new project management tool, and there’s a lot of them out there. I was focusing on the tools we used rather than on defining a process that worked for us.
I no longer fight against Basecamp.
Basecamp’s beauty is its simplicity: you don’t have to take anything out: there’s no noise to reduce. You just need to apply some creativity which, thankfully, we all have lots of right?
The Project Backlog
The obvious answer to avoiding forgetting things is to write them down. Project related things could be tasks, ideas, requirements, feature requests, websites to look at, something a client’s said: anything at all.
For all of the above we create a to-do list in Basecamp called the Project Backlog: this is where we write everything down that needs to be remembered and isn’t actionable by a specific person in the near future (more on what to do in that case soon).
Some Basecamp specific tips for you:
- empty to-do lists are automatically moved to the completed lists sidebar; to force the list to stay put, even when empty, add a to-do labeled “–––––––-” at the top of the list;
- add a description to the list and explain its purpose at the start of the project to both project and client teams;
- don’t assign items in this list to anyone; they aren’t actionable yet, so you don’t want them to appear in anyone’s global to-dos yet.
The main thing is to get everyone using it and to not be precious about what goes in there.
Weekly Reviews
All of our projects have weekly internal review meetings. The project team will get together each week to discuss what happened the previous week, what’s planned for the week ahead and to highlight any issues that we might be able to avoid with a little foresight. It’s our weekly version of what others may call standup meetings or scrums.
As part of the weekly review we’ll go through each item in the Project Backlog and convert anything that needs attention during the week ahead into actionable tasks, then assign those tasks to a member of the project team. These actionable tasks are moved to week-based to-do lists which are described below.
After the meeting we’ll send the client a message which will summarise the meeting, list the agreed tasks and highlight any issues that they need to be aware of. We’ve found this a great way of giving the client an overview of what will be happening on the project that week (especially if your weekly review meeting is at the start of the week).
Week-based to-do lists
As said above Basecamp’s to-do list feature doesn’t have the functionality built-in to give tasks due dates. To get around this we create individual to-do lists for each week of the project. So for example, the list for this week would be called “Week June 8th - June 14th”.
We don’t create a list for every week of our 6 month project - that would be silly. To focus everyone on the most immediate actions we only create week-based to-do lists for the next two weeks of the project. Remember: everything else goes in the Project Backlog.
As with the Project Backlog list, on our week-based to-do lists we add an item labeled “–––––-” to stop the list from disappearing if no items are contained within.
If an item is moved from the Project Backlog, or added directly to a week-based to-do list, it is assigned to a person. On Basecamp, by assigning it to a person, it will now show up in that person’s global list of to-dos. This is the stuff the person should be focusing on. Items in Project Backlog will never show up in a person’s to-do list unless they are assigned, which is exactly what we want.
During the weekly review any uncompleted items from the previous week will be dragged to the next week or, if their priority has been reduced, moved back to the Project Backlog.
Once their date has passed, rather than deleting week-based to-do lists, simply delete the blank to-do list when all other items have been completed or removed; on the next page refresh the list will move to completed (it’s a good idea to keep completed lists to refer back to at a later date if required).
Here’s a summary of what we just talked about…
The project backlog - create a list that you can use to store everything you might need to remember during the project.
Weekly review meetings - at the start of each week get the project team together, review the items in the Project Backlog, and convert the ones you need to work on into actionable tasks.
Week-based to-do lists - move these actionable tasks from the Project Backlog into a dedicated to-do list for that week’s work. Make sure anything in these lists are assigned to the person who’s responsible for making sure it’s done.
That’s it for now, if you take anything away from this take the following three points.
- Don’t fight Basecamp
- Write everything down
- Focus on the actionable
There are other areas of project management I’d like to discuss, possibly regarding the importance of communication or maybe that elusive agreement with clients that a project is complete (both are things I’ve learned a lot about over the past two years through trial and a number of errors!).
In the meantime though I’d love to hear your thoughts on all of the above and any Basecamp tips you’d like to share.
Published: by Jamie Pittock
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35 Comments
Interesting article. I’ve used basecamp before but never considered this approach.
Very interesting. Couple of great tips in there I’m definitely going to use. Cheers Jamie!
Outstanding mate… Loving your work.
Good work there Jamie. I have been enquiring into the best way to use Basecamp for Project Management as opposed to Task Management as we are starting the process of taking on our first staff member.
ActiveCollab looked tempting for a while there but clients love Basecamp.
Do you have any Task Templates you’d like to share?
@Hambo “ActiveCollab looked tempting for a while there but clients love Basecamp.” – I used Basecamp for years, then switched to ActiveCollab. My clients PREFER ActiveCollab! Honestly.
Hey Steve – we don’t use Basecamp’s todo templates at the moment. I am looking into creating certain checklists that would be related for all projects (initiatating a project for example). If they prove useful we’ll look into sharing them.
That would be good Jamie :)
I’m alway interested in seeing how people plan their ExpressionEngine development.
Great article! Your approach counters all shortcomings our team was experiencing till now. Setting up next week’s to-do list right now :)
ActiveCollab is also a great alternative, but we prefer Basecamp because of its simplicity.
Do you guys combine Basecamp with an invoicing add-on?
Love that approach. Gonna give a whirl here at work.
Filip – all our invoicing is done in Excel. Old school!
Ahhmm. I am the invoicing add-on :-)
Same story over here… old school. Guess I am an invoicing add-on too :)
Thanks for posting this Jamie. It’s a nice insight into the use of Basecamp. I’ve always had some trouble adding more structure into my projects with this tool.
Hi Jamie. Thanks for this post. It’s really cool to see how you created those simple conventions to get the most out of Basecamp. Thanks again for sharing!
Ryan at 37signals
Ha – great analogy with the Memento picture :-)
I do this same thing in ActiveCollab at work. In both AC and Basecamp I do something like this:
http://blog.pixolut.com/2007/08/22/getting-agile-with-basecamp/
So I add a milestone (sprint) and the associate to-do lists with the milestone (features/user stories). I associate a message with a milestone (or maybe you can add comments to milestones) either way, there is a way to discuss/clarify a feature/story in Basecamp.
Basically, I wouldn’t go anywhere else for PM than Basecamp. AC has a few too many options for novice users I think. It is also hard to navigate, Basecamp seems easier and more lightweight.
Been working with Basecamp for 3 years now – all clients use it – some fight it. But in the end the majority of clients I have worked with adopt it and use it far after my project with them is complete.
I love the Project Backlog Idea. Write everything down and make it “actionable” is my daily mantra to clients.
Thanks for the reinforcement and tip!
...fascinating!! I’ve been struggling with Basecamp in my agency in the same way… Don’t fight Basecamp is a remarkable quote!! Thanks :)
Wouldn’t it be great though if Basecamp added just a few little things so we didn’t always have to fight it so much? (i.e. to-do’s having dates…)
Basecamp is great. It’s limitations make the workflow much easier actually.
As for invoicing I’ve been using Freshbooks for little over a month and it’s been working great for me. No more needing to remember where my Excel files are. Plus it has some nifty reports… that need a bit of work, of course.
Thanks for sharing.
Nice write-up, Jamie. I haven’t used BaseCamp for a while, but as you say it’s easy enough to port this simple way of working to other software or paper processes.
Having said that, you’ve made me want to use BaseCamp again… ;)
Nice write up there Jamie with some interesting quotes. I use Basecamp in pretty much the same way as you guys at the moment, its the only way i would stay on track with what i have to do. But i havent thought of using a “Project Backlog” to-do list, but that looks like a great idea and i will be using it in the future now.
Thanks for that tip!! will try and catch a beer next time im up in Grassington!
Interesting article Jamie, I currently use another application to manage projects but Bootcamp looks a lot more productive. I worry that my clients would try and fight it though.
basecamp is cool , but my company is using ActiveCollab as well , nice tool.
We have tried ActiveCollab but we did prefer Basecamp in conjunction with Lighthouse, Harvest, Backpack and Highrise :-)
Oh, I forgot. We also use Xero for our accounts: outstanding…
Bro, you make me look like I was alone in the whole issue of forgetfulness. I was just like you but I can not say that I improved because it was the technological improvement that helps me organize myself. Anyways kudos!
Interesting article. It?s a nice insight into the use of Basecamp. I?m alway interested in seeing how people plan their ExpressionEngine development. Thanks a lot
We use Freshbooks for invoices and BC because it’s the only free one. AC seems good, also there is Huddle pretty similar.
Nice info on BC , I am using Freshbooks for invoices too , but had nothing for project management .
I was going to buy Active Collab but I’ll try BC first.
As I’m sure you know, this was featured on 37 signals product blog today. It might be worth updating now that you can set due dates on todos. I was a little confused until I realized this post was from 2009.
Thanks Dan. I didn’t know they’d featured it again. I’ve added a notice at the top of the post. Thanks!
Just revisiting this post as I wanted to check how you did that project backlog thing Jamie – just implemented that on a new project we’re managing in Basecamp, so thanks again!
@simonski (or Jamie) what do you use Lighthouse for? At a cursory glance it looks like Basecamp again, but I’m guessing you use it for managing development internally? And perhaps – now this would be super useful – can you open it up to clients for ticketing/bug reports at the testing stage (something Basecamp doesn’t handle).
Hey Emily, we use Basecamp for active projects, then move them (and clients) to Lighthouse for support once the project is complete. Support tickets and bugs are then dealt with in Lighthouse. If the support request is for an enhancement, if it’s a quick job it’s worked at from within Lighthouse and timesheeted. If it’s more involved it will be estimated and moved back into Basecamp as a new project.
Being strict about archiving projects in Basecamp and moving them onto Lighthouse helps I think cement the completion of the project in the mind of everyone working on it, especially the client. The scope is complete and everyone is in agreement that you got what you’ve paid for. Anything else from here on is new scope.
Hi Jamie,
We use a backlog with weekly reviews as well, but hadn’t thought to explain its purpose so clearly. We’ve put your great description to use. Thank you!
I saw your notice about the article being from before todo due dates being available, but am curious if you’ve changed your workflow since then? Do you still use weekly todo lists? Or have you moved to something else, like subject-based lists or a general “Actionable” list?