Item: Basecamp
Rating: 9
Author: Craig Lockley

Overall Satisfaction with Basecamp

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Basecamp is used as an external collaboration tool set for working on small to medium sized projects with external vendors as well as internal controls to ensure the project is within scope and on schedule. One of the important factors that Basecamp can provide is to allow the use of communication and collaboration that can take out most time wasted in meetings and sometimes all remove the need for a meeting. Meetings are however still integral to kick off or engaging in very critical functions such as; resolving immediate issues, elaborating on complex topics or problems. However, much of that can be recorded or accomplished within Basecamp.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Ability to login without the use of a password, as in, input your email address and a link will be sent to your mailbox to access the site. This improves usability and lower resources needed to administer lost or forgotten passwords or user account management.
Promotion of success within Basecamp through applauds really helps stimulate positive feedback when a milestone is met, or someone completes a minor task to a major task.
Free use of messaging on the message board and daily feedback from the site on activity from the previous day to all participants which helps streamline the communication and reporting to all rather than one person collecting reports or reliance on a few to report back.
Latest Activity gives a nice timeline view of the activities occurred throughout the lifespan of a campfire or within the Basecamp instance itself.

Cons

Samepage really has a better collaboration messaging system with channels and integration with other systems.
There is some functionality with linking google docs but would like to see better integration with a more wide range of applications or office suite products since we mostly use this for working with external vendors that use a vast range of products as well.
To Do lists are great, but would like to see better linkage to the messages, schedules and files. Sort of an overly complex request to a very simple process.

Return on Investment

Basecamp has allowed us to work better with third party vendors or suppliers on projects by providing more transparency and in return have seen quicker response times when tasks are relying on one team or the other.
The costs are low but they do not outweigh the benefit to use Basecamp as an internal system for project management.
The time saved on avoiding wasted meetings for simple updates has been more than beneficial on a time management perspective.

Alternatives Considered

Samepage and Slack are just a few steps ahead with its messenger and communication platforms and is leagues behind when it comes to integration with other systems. However, most systems can be redundant when attempting to accomplish something that caters to a non-technical audience or something more geared towards the "classic" project management platform (such as Microsoft Project).
For a reduction in emails and company wide or group communications, basecamp can do just as well as Samepage and Slack but when it comes down to managing resources, time management, gantt charts and more granular project management functions; Basecamp just doesn't do well as the Asana, OpenProject or OrangeScrum. More technical or software development projects should be avoided when using Basecamp from my experiences while using it.

Other Software Used

GitHub, Samepage, Microsoft Project

Likelihood to Recommend

[Basecamp is well suited for] Working with third party vendors for collaborating on basic forms of project essentials such as schedules, to-do lists, message boards, documents and feedback on the activities completed throughout the day. This is very easy to use for simply asking questions or providing feedback or concerns while avoiding back channel communications or single communications to a single person that represents us or the third party company. It allows for everyone (or those specific to a campfire) to all see and provide feedback or information whenever necessary. It also is a great alternative to endless emails and wasteful meetings.

Where Basecamp tends to fall through the cracks for us, is in regards to the lack of desktop or workstation integration or reliance on third party applications to contribute, read or manage documents. It would also be more useful if there was a desktop like app or phone app that can allow for users to interact with Basecamp without logging in through the webpage. For internal functions, it just doesn't suit our needs since we have our own messenger system, or our document management system for ensuring secure docs stay secure.

Basecamp Feature Ratings

Comments

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Basecamp is better when doing it with others.