I had an interesting IM chat with my friend Jon Ward, a project manager with whom I recently worked. We were discussing the calendar functionality in Backpack and Jon brought up one of his pet bugbears – the lack of time-spanned events in Basecamp.

Jon likes Basecamp but as a project manager he wants to be able to set start and end dates for tasks or milestones, Basecamp however only allows a single date to be set.

Anyway the conversation went as follows:

Jon:
But would you use Backpack as a different tool to Basecamp?

Dave:
I think it more of a personal organiser thing, you could probably use it like basecamp but only for a single project which didn’t require time recording

Jon:
yeah was thinking that. But why they can’t put the calendar and journal in Basecamp is beyond me.

Dave:
It probably crosses purposes with the milestones calendar and the messages in basecamp

Jon:
I think they could be integrated and then you have a fully fledged project scheduler

Dave:
it’s a possibility, I’m sure that there are other online PM apps which will do that, 37sigs need to be careful not to alienate existing customers by adding too much complexity
most people started using basecamp for it’s simplicity

Jon:
Good point but a fundamental aspect to PMing is the ability to schedule work and resource plan

Dave:
It probably wasn’t an issue when they built it for their team, It’s an interesting point though, I wonder what other companies who use basecamp do for resource scheduling?

Jon:
None i’d say as it’s too clumsy at the moment

Dave:
Or use an alternative tool (MS Project or similar) and just use basecamp for progress tracking and project communications

Jon:
That’s how the majority would be working. If Basecamp had a stronger way of scheduling then they’d be onto a right winner

Dave:
I suppose it could be optional or only visible to users with PM permisions so as not to add complexity for non-PMs?

Jon:
Have it only editable. It needs to be visible for people to know what they are supposed to be working on
Editable only for PMs that is
Viewable for the resources

Dave:
OK, we should let Jason know that we’re too big for Basecamp and demand resources scheduling or we boycott the service

Jon:
I’ve already emailed them along the similar lines

Dave:
I bet they’re worried now, watch out for Web 2.0 hitmen, you can spot them easily, they have a glossy sheen and a badge that says “beta” on it.

Jon:
lmao Have they recruited Fabretti? With a name like that you’d think he would be their top hit man!

Dave:
I believe they’ve made him an offer he can’t refuse

Jon:
Thing is though, would a beta hit actually work or would I have to stay alive to give feedback for phases 0.1,2,3,4

OK, I know it got a bit silly towards the end but I’m interested to know how resource scheduling is handled by companies using Basecamp as their project management software. If this applies to you, please take a moment to answer the poll.