From Notion to Basecamp

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If you’re struggling to manage tasks and projects with your team, I think you should try @basecamp. We recently switched from Notion and haven't felt this organized as a team in a while. Here's why 🧵

What's the job of project management software? IMHO: help a team move forward on projects, with clear priorities, without stepping on each other toes, minimizing communication overhead. In other words, it should facilitate *alignment* 🤝

With Notion, we worked in our own silos (filtered lists of tasks), losing sight of the bigger picture and constantly having to check in with each other to know where things were at. It was too extensible. We constantly tweaked it, never getting it 100% right.

Once you set Basecamp up, the home page lists all the projects you have going on + the team HQ {{ img:536a61 }}

On that same page, you get a calendar, visible to the whole team based on the projects everyone is on {{ img:ab5161 }}

This is what a project looks like inside: - Message Board (threaded conversations) - To-dos (a single glorious list) - Docs - Team chat (free-form) - Schedule (stuff here ends up in the calendar) - Automatic check-ins (questions you can ask the team at regular intervals) {{ img:d6500e }}

Some of these tools are really bare-bones compared to modern alternatives (Docs < Notion, Chat < Discord). That being said, the whole is more of the sum of its parts. They integrate and work really well together.

The unified list of to-dos is my favorite part of Basecamp. You can really get a sense of where a project is by looking at it vs. a 3-level hierarchy of kanban/tasks/docs in Notion. {{ img:208d2d }}

You also get many visual cues of what the allocated time for the project is (the "appetite" for it). {{ img:006780 }}

And a nice timeline view. {{ img:76380c }}

The Activity below each project is another favorite of mine. It shows what everyone is up to in terms of tasks/docs created and done. It notifies you when you are involved in a task (created it or commented on it). {{ img:0129e6 }}

With this setup, it's realistic to run the company with very few meetings. Even our 2 times/week standups seem less and less useful.

Writing this thread felt like an ode to opinionated software and as a reminder to be bolder in our own product decisions.

Basecamp really clicked for us, especially since we are already working in projects and sprints, following Shape Up method they created basecamp.com/shapeup/

For another thread: the genius of selling both the methodology and the tool.

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: typefully.com/u/frankdilo/t/EPj0zRO6eRbG