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.
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?
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.
No, but I think they focused on solving their own problems (and building the perfect product for them). As they've made Basecamp on of their public products, though, there are product changes they could make so that it fits everyones use cases. Or they can keep it the way it is, and only companies that work exactly like them can benefit.
I'm not even saying they should change them, but for me, there are a few feature changes that would make it way easier for me to use (and therefore a rapid fan and repeat customer).
I think having you be a rabid fan would actually hurt them. Don't take that personally; having our consulting practice be a rabid fan of Basecamp would be equally painful for them.
But if you want to plan a conference booth with a graphic designer, a professional marcom event planning, and some company principals, I can vouch for the fact that Basecamp is awesome.
like daveschappell says below, the problem (or one problem) is that their products don't match their marketing. Maybe Basecamp is really good for a specific niche, and maybe everyone knows that, but that's not how 37s positions it on their website.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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".
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".
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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?
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 63.4 ms ] threadThe 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.
I'm not even saying they should change them, but for me, there are a few feature changes that would make it way easier for me to use (and therefore a rapid fan and repeat customer).
But if you want to plan a conference booth with a graphic designer, a professional marcom event planning, and some company principals, I can vouch for the fact that Basecamp is awesome.
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.
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.
Seriously. Not kidding. You want a different app. Basecamp don't want you. There's nothing wrong with that. Or you.
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.
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".
http://basecamphq.com/buzz
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".
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.
Like the commenter downthread said, you want Pivotal Tracker, not Basecamp.
So Basecamp does not try to solve everything, it's just the best thing after e-mail.
But for task management, it still isn't better than a shared Google Spreadsheet, which is weird to me.
"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...
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.
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?