Like thousands of other folks, we use 37signals Basecamp (aff link) for online collaboration and project management. It’s a great system, if you’ve not seen it. Easy to use, intuitive, and covers all the bases for us.
We’ve had pretty good success getting the people we work with involved in Basecamp, which we’ve internally named “Projectpath”.
It’s pretty simple to use. But we wanted to write up a personal introduction from us to our clients, many of whom have not worked within a project management system.
And if they need start-up help, the Basecamp FAQs are pretty much focused on admin support, which is not really what we’re looking for. They do have a very good video how-to section, but that’s not quite what we need either.
What we need is…
- A document that would help our clients buy-in to using the system.
- Something that would assure them that this was easy to use.
- A personal introduction that could be used as a reference, if needed.
So here it is. Feel free to use it if you think something like this would be helpful for you…
-What The Heck’s Next?-
Getting Around In Matterhorn Projectpath
A Quick Guide To How We’ll Manage Things Together
There are a million ways to communicate. We call. We email. We send DMs to an @ on Twitter. It can get a bit… overwhelming. With more people contributing more information about more ideas everyday, it’s very easy for communication to get buried, sidetracked, or lost.
Projectpath is a website that’s designed to keep everything -everything- in one place. Using this system will…
• Keep all of our communication together over the length of the project
• Organize each step of our process by topic
• Archive all of our progress by date
• Make our project accessible all the time, from any computer
Think of Projectpath as our project’s office. We use a system called Basecamp to run things, and it’s easy to use. Go ahead and be intimidated if you want, but the simple fact is this: If you know how to go to a website, send email, or use a mouse, you can use Projectpath.
Projectpath has 6 different sections…
• Overview
• Messages
• To-Do
• Milestones
• Writeboards
• Files
You can move between sections easily by using the tabs near the top of the page. Each section has a different function, and together they cover all of the things we’ll have to communicate during our project.
Here’s a quick rundown of each section…
Overview- The Overview shows everything that’s happening in our project. Here’s what you can see:
• The name of the project
• Shortcuts to the other 5 sections
• A timeline for the project, if one applies
• All recent activity in every section, arranged with the most recent at the top
• An RSS feed for the project, so you’ll know each time something is added
• The names of everyone involved in our project
Messages- This is email for our project. It works because everyone can share communication in one place (that way, we don’t have to go digging around in your personal inbox ?). To post a message…
• Click “Post a new message”
• Write something
• Click “Post this message”
• That was easy, wasn’t it?
To Do- The to-do list might be the easiest way to keep track of our project’s progress. Projectpath lets you add, cross off, and move around items in a way that, frankly, makes you want to get more done just to use the to-do features. It’s easy to make lists in Projectpath.
Milestones- This section is for keeping track of things that need to be done by a certain date. It’s divided into 3 parts: Past due, Upcoming, and Completed. There’s a calendar in the margin of the Milestones section that’s color coded to reflect each list.
Writeboards- If there’s ever a need to create a document collaboratively, we’ll use a writeboard. It’s an easy way to keep track of all the versions of a document that we might need. Because we create content using different software, we don’t use writeboards for most projects.
Files- Here’s where we keep any and all files pertinent to our project. Again, the big draw is that they can be accessed and updated by anyone in the project. We keep all content for projects in the files section.
That’s all. The way we’ll use Projectpath is very intuitive. It won’t take long for you to see how collaboration is simplified with this one tool.
We’re looking forward to getting started- thanks for going through this doc.
