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I think the effectiveness of project management software depends greatly on the type of project being managed. For example, I don't consider Jira as in the sam

by timjahn 15y ago

I think the effectiveness of project management software depends greatly on the type of project being managed. For example, I don't consider Jira as in the same arena as Basecamp (and I've used both a good amount). I see Jira as a programming/development specific management tool, to be used by programming teams and maybe the managers of those teams. I see Basecamp as a far more flexible project management tool that can fit a wide variety of needs. It works great for organizing our Entrepreneurs Unpluggd events. It works well for some web dev projects and design projects, but not others. Basecamp isn't always THE solution. For some types of projects, it is. For others, it isn't. At the end of the day, the right answer is the project management software that helps you more efficiently organize your specific projects. Because Basecamp doesn't work for Joe and his projects doesn't mean it can't work amazingly for Sally and hers.

ghaff 15y ago
You make an important point. A few years back, when I was working for an IT analyst firm, I headed a project to find us new task/project management software. (Our existing application for this was old and homegrown and pretty bad.) The issue is that the significant majority of our tasks/projects were very small: Take a briefing with a client, write up notes, attach presentation, possibly include a followup note for sales, done. So project management software that was organized around the principle of a modest number of projects with milestones, actions, sub-tasks, etc. didn't really work for us. (Including the 37signals options.) We eventually settled on trac which worked pretty well for the purpose. And we'd probably have supplemented that with something more like Basecamp if we got into some more complex projects and simply handled them as a separate case. My broader point though is that I found that the "best" project management software depended on what you were trying to track.

by timjahn 15y ago

ghaff 15y ago

You make an important point. A few years back, when I was working for an IT analyst firm, I headed a project to find us new task/project management software. (Our existing application for this was old and homegrown and pretty bad.) The issue is that the significant majority of our tasks/projects were very small: Take a briefing with a client, write up notes, attach presentation, possibly include a followup note for sales, done. So project management software that was organized around the principle of a modest number of projects with milestones, actions, sub-tasks, etc. didn't really work for us. (Including the 37signals options.) We eventually settled on trac which worked pretty well for the purpose. And we'd probably have supplemented that with something more like Basecamp if we got into some more complex projects and simply handled them as a separate case. My broader point though is that I found that the "best" project management software depended on what you were trying to track.