Life at Basecamp - Six Months In • Hacker News Board

Re: Life at Basecamp - Six Months In

#11

Post by trotzke » Wed, Jul 09, 2008, 7:40 AM UTC

I think the premise of the article is misguided. If they need time tracking with accounting software integration, have they tried Harvest?

Linda sounds like the problem not basecamp. If Linda was doing a good job she would have researched problem and turned up Harvest-- at least as an option to try.

Instead she fell into the 'this is the way it's been done before mindset', that doesn't recognize the benefits of collaboration or web services.

In my experience, Linda's approach may make her feel like every penny is accounted for, but that will only be true in her books. Everyone else will be left with a print out of a week old, outdated gantt chart, and less certainty about what to do.

Re: Life at Basecamp - Six Months In

#12

Post by skmurphy » Wed, Jul 09, 2008, 8:22 AM UTC

trotzke wrote: post #11

I think the premise of the article is misguided. If they need time tracking with accounting software integration, have they tried Harvest? Linda sounds like the problem not basecamp. If Linda was doing a good job she would have researched problem and turned up Harvest-- at least as an option to try. Instead she fell into the 'this is the way it's been done before mindset', that doesn't recognize the benefits of colla…

This is a great quote "every penny is accounted for, but that will only be true in her books." One of the strengths of a collaboration app, in particular if you grant customers acces to the workspace, is that you are better able to focus on the value that you are delivering, not the hours you are working. Clients pay for results not hours: I question why the strict focus on hours. We use CentralDesktop and are happy with it, but I would never confuse it with a time tracking system.

Re: Life at Basecamp - Six Months In

#13

Post by hschenker » Wed, Jul 09, 2008, 8:38 AM UTC

jnovek wrote: post #6

We've been using Basecamp + Campfire for a few weeks on our project, and I have to say that I really like it so far. I AM really concerned about the amount of content in our Basecamp site growing out of control -- already, I have to scroll several pages to add a note to an old, seldom used message... we already have fifteen or so writeboards. If there's a way to archive this stuff, it's not readily apparent to me (al…

I used to use Basecamp as part of an eight-member team for web projects. After a few weeks, it had so many rabbit holes of data in it (each one created by different users who created different organization systems) that I stopped using it because I had no idea where to look any more.

But that's not really a fault with Basecamp itself - it's just as much of a problem with any system that allows users to create their own categories or folders, like SharePoint.

It was doubly annoying that I was forced to use two systems for communication - Outlook and Basecamp. First someone would go into Basecamp and write a message - and because they had subscribed me to it, I'd get an email with their note included.

To reply to it - instead of using Outlook, which normally would be dead easy since I could just click "reply all," I'd have to figure out where to go in Basecamp to reply to it - which was so difficult to do that I never did. Instead, I'd typically just reply to the message using Outlook, which of course defeated the purpose of Basecamp.