Andrew Fox

I’m a bit of a tidy freak and often finding myself making lists to manage workflow. I’m not obsessive about it, you can get to the stage where it becomes counterproductive, writing lists of lists etc.

List Freak

Until now I’ve always written lists on paper and last year I was introduced to using an (executive) diary where you can write lists for that day and any notes so you can look back easily. Great! This takes into account short-term lists but what about long-term lists and milestones? It’s also frustrating when things occur (as they do) which prevent you from completing your listed tasks and you end up having to rewrite them the next day.

So I’ve been on the lookout for a good while for something electronic which helps with this and allows me to move things around and realign priorities.

Collaborative List Freak

I’ve been managing the web development process for about 3 years now and usually its been with one other web developer. It wasn’t until I started working with two developers that it became apparent that I needed to rethink how I allocate tasks to both developers and also communicate priorities. So it was time to think about some software to do this.

Amongst the ideas I had were:

1.    Design and develop something of our own and run on our server.

This is all very well but who has the time to do that?

2.    Find a massive off the shelf system to run on our server do a load of things and kill several birds with one stone.

I tested Teamwork and Weboffice, MS Exchange and looked at a load of others but they were all vastly overcomplicated and badly designed for what we needed. I mean whats the point in an organiser if you have to train staff to use it?? An organiser in itself should be well organised and intuitive no matter what scale.
MS Exchange again is a good idea but after hours of working out compatibility issues between PC and Apple clients MS Exchange was by far the best for what we needed – BUT ITS SO EXPENSIVE!

3.    Find some kind of pay as you go web based option.

For ages I thought this would be the worst option as it can be pretty useless for scalability and compatibility and who knows where your data is and if it will still be there tomorrow?

Basecamp

Basecamp is my chosen option for a load of reasons:

•    It’s cheap! $25/month for infinite users
•    You couldn’t build anything for that cheap
•    Its web based so doesn’t take up space on your server
•    You can export your data if you need to switch
•    It’s so easy to use! I had a basic setup in 10 mins.
•    You can allocate tasks to people and tick them off
•    You can set milestones and get reminders
•    When a task is allocated you can also send an email notification
•    Tasks are easy to prioritise and reorder

I’ve now implemented Basecamp into our workflow at Max-TM and the majority of us have been using it now for about a month. So far we’ve seen an improvement in:

•    Understanding of daily workflow between everyone
•    Alignment within workflow & priorities
•    Strategy & milestones
•    Organisation individually
•    Communication of completed tasks

Overall the main system will help us get things done more efficiently and therefore quicker.

In Conclusion

Many people, especially designers find the subject of organisation boring but the fact is, the more people you work with the more complex communication and tasking becomes and unless you are efficient you will encounter big problems somewhere along the way. Invest a little time initially to get yourself a solid workflow and this should pay off later.

Basecamp is a tool that helps with this and once you’ve spent 10 minutes setting it up, it’s a cinch to use and is something you don’t have to worry or think about. I’ll let you know how we get on with it after a few more months. Any questions or thoughts let me know!