[Case study] How Basecamp unites web agency Freshout's offices in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Guadalajara

Chris Anderson, General Manager & Principal at full-service web agency Freshout, wrote to tell us what a great job Basecamp does for his team:

Basecamp is hands down the best project management app on the market. We use Basecamp for managing client and internal projects alike, and it's been an amazing tool for storing and organizing conversations, files, milestones, and tasks. From initial kick-off conversations through the design and development phase and quality assurance process, it helps everyone on the project stay on the same page and on track, without getting lost in an endless slew of emails and files.

Simply put, Basecamp just works...which is more than I can say for many web apps I've used. Thanks for continuing to enhance such a great application, you guys kick ass!

SF, Philly, and Guadalajara
We asked Chris to give us an in-depth look at how his team uses Basecamp and he wrote up the following:

Freshout is a full-service web agency providing product strategy, design, development, and marketing consultation services – in other words, we build and launch web applications that provide real business results for clients. With offices in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Guadalajara, having streamlined communication among our team is extremely important in our ability to collaborate effectively and deliver finished projects on time.

The Freshout team at work.

From project brief to post-launch
From the initial project brief to the design, development, and QA processes, and onto the rollout and post-launch feature enhancement phases, we use Basecamp for all project correspondence, file sharing, task delegation, milestone management, and time management for each and every project we work on, both internally and for clients. When a new project signs, the first step is always setting up a Basecamp project, adding the team members that will be involved, uploading the initial specs, and posting a message introducing the team to the project.

[Case study] How Basecamp helped Design Extensions grow from a 1 man shop doing under $50k/year to a 5 man shop doing over $250k/year

Jay Owen started Design Extensions 10 years ago (1999), while he was still in high school (17 yrs old). The company focus on small to medium sized businesses with web site design and graphic design services. Below he details how Basecamp has helped him grow his business.

How do you use Basecamp?
Before Basecamp, I did most of the work myself and could only juggle a few projects at a time.

With Basecamp, we are currently maxing out the 35 project account level (about to upgrade). We went from a 1 man shop doing under 50k/year to a 5 man shop doing over 250k/year. Basecamp allows us such flexibility and ease of communication, that we don't even have a physical office. Myself and my team work from home (or anywhere with a good wifi connection) and are able to seamlessly communicate with Basecamp and Campfire all day. Basecamp has become a key part of our business and helped us grow to where we are today.

Which features do you use most?
Milestones and Time are the two features we use the most. Milestones help us map out major assignments each day of the week for various members of our team. Using the Milestones overview page, we can easily take a glance at the company as a whole or individuals to see who is assigned what and we are on our schedule. The time tab lets us keep an eye on how much time is being spent on each project and account for it at the end of the week.

Tell us a story about a specific project/situation where Basecamp helped you out.
When I started Design Extensions over 10 years ago,  our projects were managed via e-mail. This worked for a while but only allowed for so many projects to be managed at once. Even with a good calendar and organized network files, it wasn't ideal. 

When we signed up for Basecamp, 5 years ago, we had no idea how much it would revolutionize our workflow and allow us to grow. With Basecamp, we are able to easily work with clients, employees, and contractors all over the world with ease. It's easy enough for newbies to pick-up quickly and has just the right feature combination to get things done - on time and in order.

Any tips or tricks for other customers?
Once a project moves from a production status to more of a maintenance/on-going project that may not be accessed on a regular basis, but we still want to leave active, we move them to the company "ZZ Maintenance." This helps separate the projects we are in and out of every day from accounts we might only be in once a month.

We are in Basecamp, Highrise, and Campfire every day. Highrise is for pre-sale or individual communications outside of an active project, Basecamp is for active projects, and Campfire keeps our team together in multiple locations.

Anything else?
We are often approached by other sites and services that claim to offer "more features" than Basecamp. What each of these companies fails to understand is that the joy of Basecamp is not that it offers more features than anyone out there, but that it does what we need to get the job done and nothing more. 

The joy of Basecamp is in its simplicity and focus. Features for features sake are not a bonus, they are a burden. 37signals understands this extremely well and it shines in each every product produced.

How to use Inkling prediction markets in Basecamp

Inkling aims to make prediction markets easily accessible to a wider audience. The product now has a widget that integrates with Basecamp so you can predict milestones.

For example, now you can get some help coming up with your project milestones. We'll take a look at what this could look like using a scenario with 37signals' very popular (and rightly so) project management application Basecamp...

Learn more about how Inkling and Basecamp can work together.

The "How to" category at the Basecamp Customer Forum

The Basecamp Customer Forum has a nifty "How to" category where questions are asked and answered.

Example: SteveVZ asked about milestones vs. to-dos...

I’ve just started evaluating Basecamp and I have a very basic question: what is the difference between milestones and to-do’s and what is the relationship between the two? I don’t find a concise definition of these concepts anywhere in the help system. If anyone can tell me how they use these, I’d be very grateful!

thejoshmartin replied:

Steve,

A Milestone is a due date in time that is considered a major project point. To-Do’s are the little items that need to happen leading up to that Milestone.

You can link To-Do’s to milestones, but you cannot have due dates on To-Do’s.

Both of them are able to be assigned to a team member. Most likely your PM would be assigned the Milestone, while the To-Do’s might be assigned to team members.

Hope this helps. You can also have multiple to-do list that coordinate to the same milestone.

See more how tos.

Keyboard shortcuts for editing Basecamp to-do items

Basecamp power user tip: Hover over a to-do item and press 'e' to edit it. Then press return to submit or esc to cancel. Less clicking, more to-doing!

Basecamp is the "glue" at iSeatz

Companies like Air Canada, Amtrak, CitiBank, and MasterCard all rely on iSeatz, a global provider of customized online travel solutions. In turn, iSeatz relies on Basecamp to keep everything organized. COO Allen Darnell tells us more below.

As the COO of iSeatz, I’m constantly challenged to simultaneously juggle a few time-sensitive projects for some of the biggest names in travel and financial services. These companies rely on iSeatz to create and launch highly customized booking engines that tap into our exclusive network of almost 200,000 suppliers across the globe like OpenTable, Avis-Budget Group and TicketNetwork Direct. Inevitably, the multiple players involved in each project have diverse work styles, may speak different languages, and typically aren’t used to agile product development — a cornerstone of iSeatz’ solution development process.

Basecamp is the “glue” that helps to hold all of these moving parts together. It provides a powerful, efficient, and secure framework that enables the full team — including iSeatz’ executive and development teams and our clients and partners — to collaborate, track deadlines and easily communicate.

iSeatz started using Basecamp three years ago for client engagements such as Amtrak, Delta, Air Canada, Northwest Airlines, MasterCard and Citi, as well as internal development projects.

But we realized its value to the ‘nth degree’ during our recent, high-stakes engagement with KLM:

There we were… a small New Orleans-based company taking on a massive international project with Europe’s largest airline. The project involved working with over 70 international points of sale, handling six different language translations, seven new currencies, extending our global customer care capabilities, and coordinating with dozens of players, from design agencies and vendors to translation providers and (of course) our overseas client. The development process to create KLM’s enhanced online booking engine was intricate, extensive and intense—but much more manageable because of Basecamp’s ability to enhance visibility and foster streamlined communications.

Tips of the Trade…Based on my experience using Basecamp, I’ve found that most new users need minimal training to get up and running. However, when working with new users – especially those who work for big companies-- it’s critical to reinforce the fact that it MUST be used for all communications. If someone responds via email, I make a point to reply via Basecamp or post their comment on the Basecamp site. A little push goes a long way.

Basecamp continues to play a large role in our day-to-day work and is hands-down, a HUGE contributor to our ongoing success — and the success of our clients.

FancyZoom lets you view Basecamp images inline without leaving the page you're on

FancyZoom is a tool we use to allow customers to view full-size photos and images inline without requiring a separate web page load.

One neat use of FancyZoom in Basecamp: It allows you to view an image while leaving a comment. Let's say you're in the middle of leaving a comment about a message that has an image attached to it.

You can go ahead and click on the image and see it at full size without actually leaving the page.

Click to close the image and then you can resume typing your comment.

How to adapt Basecamp to an agile methodology

High Notes offers a blog post called "How to do SCRUM with Basecamp?"

About 2 years ago we were sitting at the office trying to figure out which tool to use for project management. I mean, being agile is about being simple, but index cards were starting to get messy...

Of all the tools we tried, the one that gave us the best results was Basecamp. These are the two reasons that we believe make Basecamp great for agile project management:

Simplicity: There is no need for training when you start using Basecamp. In essence Basecamp is a set of message boards, blogging tools, calendars and to-do list trackers. All these tools combined in an intuitive way is what Basecamp is all about. If your team can't figure out how to use Basecamp... you're in troubles. Being agile is about using the simplest tools available.

Interactions instead of Process: The purpose of Basecamp is to promote and enhance collaboration between a team. Basecamp doesn't try to force you into a specific workflow as most project management tools do. You can pretty much do whatever process or workflow you want, and still, Basecamp is going to be helpful. Guess what's the first line of the Agile Manifesto? Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. So instead of thinking "Is ticket 4137 assigned to David or to Paula?", you will see the discussion of a real issue between your team.

The post goes on to give a detailed explanation of how to adapt Basecamp to an agile methodology (they use a mixture of Scrum and XP). Check it out.

Basecamp: Keep track of the hours spent on a task with time tracking

Basecamp time tracking lets you keep track of the hours spent on a task or a complete project (for plus or higher accounts only).

Watch an audio/video tour of Time Tracking to learn more.

Jamie Pittock of ErskineLabs: "Basecamp’s beauty is its simplicity"

In "Project management is easy," Jamie Pittock of ErskineLabs talks about how his team uses Basecamp to manage projects.

THE PROJECT BACKLOG – create a list that you can use to store everything you might need to remember during the project.

WEEKLY REVIEW MEETINGS – at the start of each week get the project team together, review the items in the Project Backlog, and convert the ones you need to work on into actionable tasks.

WEEK-BASED TO-DO LISTS – move these actionable tasks from the Project Backlog into a dedicated to-do list for that week’s work. Make sure anything in these lists are assigned to the person who’s responsible for making sure it’s done.

That’s it for now, if you take anything away from this take the following three points.

1. Don’t fight Basecamp
2. Write everything down
3. Focus on the actionable

The post is filled with good tips. Check it out.

Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.