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Trello, Asana, Basecamp, etc. Having spent a lot of time assessing my team's needs and trying to figure out a solution that works, I'd add that picking a tool

Trello, Asana, Basecamp, etc. Having spent a lot of time assessing my team's needs and trying to figure out a solution that works, I'd add that picking a tool is the easy part. Since most of these tools are very flexible in how you use them, without enforcing incredibly strict workflows/process of their own, the really tough part is defining your own workflow/process. The even tougher part is getting people to actually follow that. A task management tool is only as effective as it is religiously used by all involved. The moment a project conversation gets side-barred into an email thread, communication gets scattered and is no longer consolidated. Someone consistenly forgets to update their project status every time something changes? Suddenly others are out of the loop, and others stop updating project status because it that seems to be acceptable. While you don't want to be a control freak about this stuff, it is critical to make sure any user is committed to using it religiously. It is also important to make sure the process is clearly defined in a simple, SHORT, and easy to find list somewhere. Expect lots of questions on edge cases for "how do we handle X," and think of good ways to give friendly reminders to those who forget to do something, and less-friendly reminders to those who are frequent offenders.

brd 11y ago
I totally agree that the tool itself is only a very small sliver of the problem and I'm well prepared to fight the cultural battle of adding process to task management and communication. My greater concern is picking a tool that won't buckle under it's own weight. I use Trello personally but from what I can tell it won't hold up well when a team starts throwing a lot of tasks into it. Basecamp seems to have a similar issue with not handling volume well. Basecamp quickly becomes unruly because of the sheer number of places where the same information can live although I will grant that with enough discipline that shouldn't be too big an issue. Brightpod seems like an interesting option because it's almost identical to Trello but with multiple views to narrow the problem space depending on the goal you're trying to assess/accomplish. Asana is another top contender for me.
- shostack 11y ago
  Interesting--sounds like a similar challenge to what I face. Just to make sure I'm grokking you...are you describing the use case where you might have a single project, potentially have it live in multiple boards/lists (Trello) or projects (Asana), and update all instances from a single place? That's been a major headache for me where we might have a Marketing calendar in Trello, but then want sub-boards for each individual project, while still keeping all of them current. Or having an individual have their own board pulling in cards from a parent team board. Is that the problem you say Brightpod solves?

brd 11y ago

I totally agree that the tool itself is only a very small sliver of the problem and I'm well prepared to fight the cultural battle of adding process to task management and communication. My greater concern is picking a tool that won't buckle under it's own weight. I use Trello personally but from what I can tell it won't hold up well when a team starts throwing a lot of tasks into it. Basecamp seems to have a similar issue with not handling volume well. Basecamp quickly becomes unruly because of the sheer number of places where the same information can live although I will grant that with enough discipline that shouldn't be too big an issue. Brightpod seems like an interesting option because it's almost identical to Trello but with multiple views to narrow the problem space depending on the goal you're trying to assess/accomplish. Asana is another top contender for me.

shostack 11y ago
Interesting--sounds like a similar challenge to what I face. Just to make sure I'm grokking you...are you describing the use case where you might have a single project, potentially have it live in multiple boards/lists (Trello) or projects (Asana), and update all instances from a single place? That's been a major headache for me where we might have a Marketing calendar in Trello, but then want sub-boards for each individual project, while still keeping all of them current. Or having an individual have their own board pulling in cards from a parent team board. Is that the problem you say Brightpod solves?