I spent about a week evaluating a range of tools for creating great products on the web. The harder I looked for the perfect tool, the more frustrated I became. However, I did realize one thing:
The more a tool does, the more frustrating it is to use.
My experience for the past 1.5 years has been with Atlassian tools: Jira for project management, Confluence (wiki) for product planning. Atlassian’s tools have too many features. Some of the features are great, some of them just get in the way.
Today I’m starting at ChallengePost. In preparation I’ve been using many different tools to see what feels natural and what is likely to scale as the team grows. My goal is to implement a process that avoids the friction bad tools and processes create as teams get larger.
I’m going to spend this week talking about the tools and processes I plan to propose we use at ChallengePost when we build software.
So, what’s first? We need a place to capture ideas and nurture them. We need a place to organize everything that happens before code gets written.
Basecamp
Basecamp impressed me by it’s lack of features. It is the 80 / 20 rule applied to software: 80 percent of the customers only need 20 percent of product features. So, they built a product for that customer and successfully avoid complexity in the software. This makes it a joy to use and collaborate with.
Basecamp is designed with consulting in mind. It’s easy to set up a project and add your customer while restricting them to only that project. Since customers see what you see, everyone is better able to communicate and collaborate. I’m looking forward to seeing how external parties like communicating with us in Basecamp.
A few ideas for using Basecamp
Capture important dates for deliverables publicly as Milestones
Upload designs and wireframes to get feedback from stakeholders
Use a product like ProofHQ to add comments right onto PDFs
Use todo lists to make sure you do everything you need to for a presentation
Alternatives
Bantam Live – Essentially a combination of Highrise and Basecamp. Targeted towards business development with a short sales cycle. I liked what I saw, but it didn’t seem to support the helpful access control for integrating your customers into projects
A Wiki – Wikis don’t effectively facilitate brainstorming and communication. What they are good for is capturing things that are concrete – like specifications and facts.
Google Wave – Should be great for real time collaboration, but waves are a little bit unstructured. And, there is no way to let people know you changed something.
Others ??? – I’m sure there are more and I’d love to hear them from you.
Now that Basecamp is in place, there’s a great place to collect all of the “stuff” you have for a feature or project. Stay tuned for tomorrow when I talk about Paper Wireframes.
The tools I like: Basecamp
I spent about a week evaluating a range of tools for creating great products on the web. The harder I looked for the perfect tool, the more frustrated I became. However, I did realize one thing:
My experience for the past 1.5 years has been with Atlassian tools: Jira for project management, Confluence (wiki) for product planning. Atlassian’s tools have too many features. Some of the features are great, some of them just get in the way.
Today I’m starting at ChallengePost. In preparation I’ve been using many different tools to see what feels natural and what is likely to scale as the team grows. My goal is to implement a process that avoids the friction bad tools and processes create as teams get larger.
I’m going to spend this week talking about the tools and processes I plan to propose we use at ChallengePost when we build software.
So, what’s first? We need a place to capture ideas and nurture them. We need a place to organize everything that happens before code gets written.
Basecamp
Basecamp impressed me by it’s lack of features. It is the 80 / 20 rule applied to software: 80 percent of the customers only need 20 percent of product features. So, they built a product for that customer and successfully avoid complexity in the software. This makes it a joy to use and collaborate with.
Basecamp is designed with consulting in mind. It’s easy to set up a project and add your customer while restricting them to only that project. Since customers see what you see, everyone is better able to communicate and collaborate. I’m looking forward to seeing how external parties like communicating with us in Basecamp.
A few ideas for using Basecamp
Alternatives
Now that Basecamp is in place, there’s a great place to collect all of the “stuff” you have for a feature or project. Stay tuned for tomorrow when I talk about Paper Wireframes.