Basecamp

This is a popular open-source & free project management tool that I’ve tried to use recently after Trello, Jira, GitHub Project, and a bunch of Todolist apps

Thus, here are just some of my thoughts after the first experience with the platform

Disclaimer

Here are all the subjective opinions of a first-time user. There are things that Basecamp provided but I didn’t check out like tutorial videos, team collaboration, etc.

Cool parts

3 ways of managing the tasks & communication of an organization (HQ, Functions & Projects) with great choices of key items like message board, discussion (camp fire), todos, event schedule, event checkins & file sharing

These components are neatly arranged as shown below:

The special highlights for me were:

1. Automatic Checkins

2. My Assignemnts with Dates

Automatic Checkins

Automated questions for getting feedback from the assignees in a systematic and predefined manner.

For me, they provide a strong system for holding myself accountable and motivated daily (provided that the notifications manageme to pop up on my laptop/ mobile, considering how I’ve messed around too much with these systems’ settings).

My Assignments with Dates

Basically, it’s an automatically generated list of to-dos from those I added in virtually everywhere fromt teams to projects, with the items well sorted in terms of date.

This is greate way for me to keep track of what I need to work on without referring to individual boards

Potential Improvements

I would love to have my assignments with dates section more visible. Right now, I need to click on My assignments tiny links then click on the right tab to see this awesome list. Probably I should make a codepen for an alternative design of this

Make more step-by-step onsite tutorials. Right now, there are only such tutorials for navigating inside a specific board (projects or teams), while the rest of information I suspect are in the video tutorials. Honestly speaking, I prefer the onsite tutorials to the video clips since it’s more interactive. Also, it would be better to have the system register if the user has completed the tutorials and stop suggesting them again later on.