Keeping on top of projects with Basecamp
Keeping on top of your daily work is difficult enough on a good day but now we are returning from the festive holidays many of us will have projects to jump onto and pick up again or even new projects that have already come in fresh this week.
For myself I’m in the last stretch of finishing two client sites, writing a new web app for a new client, writing my next talk for Wired Weston a local business event and maintaining my sanity whilst helping to keep others productive and balancing regular work load.
Having several projects to manage and keep track of no matter their nature can be difficult so I recommend using a tool from 37signals called basecamp (aff. link). A free account is available with paid plans from only $15 per month. If like my business you are managing multiple projects it’s invaluable to have a paid version for more projects.
BaseCamp is a pay as you go service and that’s great because I don’t want to be tied to yet another contract service for my business and it allows me to upgrade/downgrade accounts at any time which is fantastic because one month we may want to track 20 projects, the next only 5 and in three months time we may be tracking 30 projects and having various levels of pricing depending on projects is extremely useful.
The web interface is very nice (take a look at the tour) – extremely easy to find your way around and perform actions such as making milestones, adding different types of notes such as snippets of code, copy-writing pieces, etc. Then you have an enormous to-do list functionality which allows you to create unlimited to-do lists and assign items to them of which you can assign to individual people within your company, set a due date and assign to a milestone you have setup for your project. Upload files of all your photoshop drafts, text pieces, code files, images, audio, executable files and much more to do with your project. Basecamp also allows you to track time spent on each task so you can see where your are spending most time and bill accordingly should you charge by the hour.
Running a business depending on the size of the project we generally give our clients access to their project on basecamp which allows us to work closer and easier to meeting their needs, quick turn around and even easier to help train clients on using the new system as they see it develop and how it works.
If you work remotely there are various iPhone applications to manage your Basecamp account such as Insight and Outpost (i use the most) or if you do not have an iPhone/iPod touch you can still access Basecamp via your mobile phone browser (with javascript enabled) and then integrate with your billing systems, invoicing, accounting and more with the many extras available.
Do you use BaseCamp or a similar product and what do you think?
