Any of you guys and gals use BaseCamp (www.basecamphq.com) as a project management tool?
What do you think?
How do you use it?
Are there others that are better?
Do you invite customers in?
DanDan Morrison
Senior editor
Edited 4/11/2008 8:36 pm ET by DanMorrison
Edited 4/11/2008 8:36 pm ET by DanMorrison
Replies
Design/Build Project Management and Communications for Professional Builders,
[email protected]
What do you think?
I think it sounds like 'tail-wagging-the-dog' enablement technology. ;o)
As a small design-build/remod guy, if I want to have time to actually get any work done, I need to have a bulletproof phone number for the guy who signs the checks, a phone to call him with, and a pad of graph paper to make sketches and notes on. That's all. If I were to get involved with that sort of project management system, I would spend 85% of my time managing the system, and 15% on the project.
Maybe for multi-million-dollar commercial projects featuring 126 subs, a design committee of 30 people (none of whom are ever 'in'), and five or six overlapping AHJ's swarming all over the place inspecting it, something like this would be useful. But it would be a full-time job to keep up with it; the person doing that wouldn't have time to do anything else.
Completely unnecessary and impractical for builders at my level.
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not brought
low by this? For thine evil pales before that which
foolish men call Justice....
I'm not using it. I just browsed the site. I checked into their forum and read through a thread. I didn't understand anything in six or seven posts. Either they aren't speaking English or I'm too dense to understand.
It was in English...so I guess I know the answer!
Bob's next test date: 12/10/07
1. I really like it.
2. I use it for posting files, links, project communications and some day I'll track my time on there.
3. There are a couple other products like basecamp. If you google project management and basecamp you'll see some links for articles comparing different products. Basecamp is very easy to use.
4. I try and get my customers to do all the communication on there. You'll get all the admin tools... they see a 'customer' version and you can limit what they can do on there.
I use basecamp for my graphic/web design business and I really like it. It's great for keeping all the communication on a project organized, much easier than trying to track a bunch of email conversations. It's great for posting files/links (perfect for my business). I think you can try it for free, but if you pay you'll get more features, like time tracking and milestone calendars.