Wow, what a week. The whole company was in town to launch the all new Basecamp. Launches are a mixture of exhilaration, stress, thrills, anxiety, joy, pride, surprise, and flat-out exhaustion. We’re experiencing all of these emotions, and plenty more.
All things considered, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. We’re humbled by that. That’s not to hide the fact that there were rough spots, some confusion, and some questions. It’s been all hands on deck helping our customers with their questions and concerns while also listening intently and patiently to their praise and criticism. We have a lot more listening to do.
Where’s time tracking?
What was most interesting to us was the reaction around the lack of time tracking in the all new Basecamp. The people who rely on the time tracking feature in Basecamp Classic really rely on it. It’s still there in Classic, of course, but huge numbers of people already want to switch to the new Basecamp. That’s awesome. However, since the new Basecamp doesn’t offer time tracking, they don’t feel like they can make the switch yet.
We had nearly 1000 beta testers using Basecamp over the last few months. We heard about the lack of time tracking, but the lack of time tracking didn’t stand out as unique against the total field of feedback. Further, time tracking was only used by around 14% of paying Basecamp Classic customers in 2011. Based on beta feedback, and usage statistics, we didn’t anticipate such a strong visceral “no time tracking is a deal breaker” reaction. This was definitely a blind spot for us.
Deep understanding comes before designing
Our values have always revolved around designing the best software in the world to solve problems we intimately understand. The new Basecamp is the perfect representation of those values. It’s excellent at what it does. It’s our best work and it’s only going to get better.
However, since we don’t track time at 37signals, we don’t have a deep understanding of the time tracking problem. Plain and simple, this is why time tracking isn’t in the initial release of the all new Basecamp. We simply don’t understand it well enough.
We didn’t want to shoehorn anything into the new Basecamp that we didn’t understand well enough to feel confident in our design. We could have done something that might have simply satisfied people who were used to time tracking in Classic, but we’re not here to just do the bare minimum. We’re not here to simply satisfy. We’re here to make the best products in the world for our customers. We’re here to delight beyond expectations. We’re here to give people a combination of things they can’t get anywhere else.
Help us understand how and why you track time
Before we can commit to saying yes or no to adding time tracking in a future version of the all new Basecamp, we need to understand the problem better. It’s time to observe, study, learn, and understand how and why our customers track time.
If you’d like to help, we’d love to hear from you. Over the next few months we’ll be talking to customers 1-on-1 (via Skype video chat) for a more in-depth understanding of how people use time tracking.
We’d like to talk to you 1-on-1
If you’re interested in helping us understand how you track time, please fill out this survey. We’ll be contacting a select group of customers for the 1-on-1 interviews. We’re anticipating a lot of responses, so we won’t be able to talk directly with everyone, but we’ll do our best to come away from this experience with a deep understanding of what people need, expect, want, and dream about time tracking.
Thanks for reading, understanding, and helping us know your world a little better.
Andrew
on 09 Mar 12A great post. But “Over the next few months” oh boy! <- wait for the reaction to that one!
JF
on 09 Mar 12Andrew: Just being honest. We have close to zero understanding of the problem right now. It’s going to take some time to get up to speed and really understand it deeply. Rushing is a short term solution. We’re in this for the long term.
We’ll be rolling out other great updates in the meantime. We think people will like what they see.
Jesse
on 09 Mar 12One additional way to get there is to start tracking time. You might potentially gain insights into 1) how 37s team’s time is used and 2) how time tracking could be implemented.
Eugen
on 09 Mar 12yes, “few months” is way too long. time tracking lesson #1: if you rely on time tracking your income depends on it and then you need it now! not at some point in the future.
Michael
on 09 Mar 12What’s nice isn’t the time-tracking, it’s the time-tracking tied to specific tasks. It’s way better than doing duplicate entry in another app and forces the tasks to mean something.
JF
on 09 Mar 12Eugen: If you need it now you can continue to use it like you used it yesterday – it’s still in Basecamp Classic. Nothing changes there. We didn’t take anything away from anyone.
Christopher Hawkins
on 09 Mar 12It wasn’t that long ago that you guys were doing client work. Surely you understand the basics of time-tracking against a task or project? You understood it well enough to build what’s currently in Basecamp Classic. Is there any compelling reason not to port the Classic time-tracking features over to the new Basecamp?
Eugen
on 09 Mar 12i think part of the problem is that time tracking is feature that is in a paid plan. we made an upgrade to get time tracking. and with bcx we would still pay the same but don’t have an important feature. not a good deal for us.
Rahul
on 09 Mar 12I went to sign up for the survey and chose “I don’t track time in Basecamp” because we don’t. But we do have a custom built in-house tool that we use to track time and I’d love to talk about our decisions there and how they could contribute to Basecamp. Unfortunately, the form immediately removes all subsequent fields if you don’t already track time with Basecamp.
Surely you’d like to hear from people who don’t currently track time with Basecamp? There’s a good reason for it and I’m open to sharing why :-)
Richard N
on 09 Mar 12@Eugen Stick with classic until it’s done then.
JF
on 09 Mar 12Christopher: We never tracked time. Not even in the client days.
Copying something from one product to another without understanding it isn’t a solution we’re comfortable with. If we were just going to copy whatever we did before, there would have been no reason to build an all new Basecamp. We also have reason to believe Basecamp Classic’s time tracking may not be adequate for a lot of people. Even people using it may not like it – they may just use it because it’s available. That’s not a good long-term experience.
We want to do better, not just be adequate. Cargo culting is bad whether it’s your own work or someone else’s work. If you don’t understand the why of what you’re doing, it’s not worth doing.
Andrew
on 09 Mar 12@JF Thanks for the quick response. Absolutely agree. If you do such a great job as with the new Calendar, I’m sure it’ll be worth waiting for.
NL
on 09 Mar 12@Rahul- You’re right. I’ve updated the survey, and we’d love to have your thoughts on time tracking regardless of whether you currently use Basecamp Classic’s built in time tracking.
Rick Vugteveen
on 09 Mar 12What about a partnership with someone like Harvest? They REALLY get time tracking and will always have a focus on the area that 37signals will not (presumably). Perhaps a deal could be worked out where a limited version of Harvest (time tracking only) was free to Basecamp users, a sizeable portion of whom would want to upgrade to a real Harvest account to get the awesome billing and invoicing integration.
Obviously this is massively hypothetical and depends on your business strategy and the willingness of both parties to do a deal. But it is worth mentioning as Basecamp’s previous time tracking just wasn’t working for us at the last agency I was working with. In any case I wish you the best in sorting out an excellent solution this time around.
JF
on 09 Mar 12Rick: That’s a possibility too, but we have to understand it completely before we choose a direction. Lots of options are on the table. We don’t want to rely on someone else to tell us how people understand it, we want to understand it ourselves. Only then can we make a decision on how/if we want to tackle it.
Eugen
on 09 Mar 12right, you didnt’t take away anything. but you are rolling out a new version that does less than before. its like having a new hinda model that has no ac anymore. the old model used to have an ac.
and i dont like the argument “use old basecamp nothing changes there” because classic wont change but it will not improve either, right? there are sooo many things people were begging for on the answers pages (highrise integration, dragdropn in calendar etc). so it looks like this will never happen in classic and it feels like using old stuff. who wants to pay for old stuff?
Tomas Ordonez
on 09 Mar 12I never used Time Tracking on the classic basecamp because it didn’t seem to be a good fit for my process.
I found it difficult and often people would mutiny about time tracking. We do a lot of field work. When the project started I had assumptions about how long it would take to do a task. Back then I couldn’t go on the field to find out face to face how long it actually took.
Field support team would send me a time tracking list of tasks and the time would never match to my estimates. I assume my estimates were wrong because I was not out there. I kept receiving lists with time that was very far from my estimates.
I decided to go out in the field to face reality. My discovery was that it was hard to time track all tasks due to other circumstances.
A specific example is this:
The big milestone was to install a product in an airplane. A task was that the pilot seats need to be removed. My estimate was that the seats take 30 minutes to be removed. The field team came with a time of 3 hours. I went there and it took longer because the task depended on the airplane owner to find the airplane technician to allow that. And reserve the crane to lift the seats. While the field team is sitting down waiting for this happened they wasted 2:30 hours.
Even though you could register these details on the comments of a task. It was not ideal. I was looking for something like inputs for: Estimated time and Real time and somewhere to explain why these 2 were different. And how that would affect invoicing.
EH
on 09 Mar 12How do you know whether you’re manifesting Second System Effects?
Jesse
on 09 Mar 12This is a great response to the original comment storm from your launch post. This tone and attitude is what makes your apps a little bit special. Excited to see what you come up with!
Allan Nielsen
on 09 Mar 12Been using different timetracking “apps” over the last few years. And as others are saying, timetracking on a task is a great feature.
But at our company we have found, that as a project might have 100 to-do listed in Basecamp, you more or less end up doing maybe 3-400 to-do – Many minor to-do’s aren’t added to Basecamp, jsut to get checked off 5 mins later, logging the time.
Or take a 15 min phoneconversation with a client. You then have to create a to-do and then mark it as complete, and log time on it.
We have been using a fantastic system, just like the Journal feature in Backpack, BUT in the app we’re using, you can actually log the time on a client/project, and the type of task.
It’s working phenomenal, and when we saw Journal in Backpack, we we’re so thrilled, because we thought we could finally move everything into one place (37signals suite)
I think you should take a really really good look at journal and the possibilities of adding a timelog there…
JF
on 09 Mar 12but you are rolling out a new version that does less than before.
The new version doesn’t do less than Classic. It does different things than Classic. The new Basecamp has dozens of features that Classic doesn’t have. It’s not more/less, it’s a different mix.
Anonymous Coward
on 09 Mar 12Is this the closets to jf admitting he’s wrong as we’ll ever get?! Methinks!
Camden Spiller
on 09 Mar 12Thank you for doing this!
We were feeling rather left out in the cold until this blog post.
Time tracking is crucial to our workflow so I’m relieved to know you guys are taking this as seriously as you are.
Thanks for reaching out!
Anonymous Coward
on 09 Mar 12If 37Signals doesn’t need time tracking – then clearly no one does…
Christopher Hawkins
on 09 Mar 12Now that is wild. Amongst the client-work folks I know, even the guys who do fixed-bid still track their time. I’d love to hear how you managed to not track time and still know what kind of profitability you were looking at on a project-to-project basis.
Fair enough.If I may offer my two cents, speaking as a guy who runs a firm that tracks time:
1) At the very least, let people log hours against a project. 2) Even better, let them log hours against a specific requirement/milestone within that project. 3) Allow people to tag the time entry with some kind of brief narrative description or not. 4) Bonus points: Allow people to tag a time entry as billable/non-billable.
The real question is, how to implement? Typically I’ve seen systems that do after-the-fact time tracking, or track-as-you-go time tracking. I’ve worked places that did both, they each have their points of friction.
To cover the basics of after-the-fact time tracking, you could potentially offer a master list of open milestones with a field for each milestone for each day of the week, so people can see everything they’re assigned to all at once and just add time to the ones they’ve worked on today. Being able to see it all at once eliminates a bit of friction, but it can be overwhelming if you have a lot of open projects.
Or, you can offer more of a FreshBooks-style form where you’re filling out a small blank form focused on a single entry at a time. The friction here is having to click around to specify a project and/or milestone every time you submit a new time entry.
With after-the-fact time tracking, the strongest friction is often times not the system itself, but the gyrations people go through before getting to the system – scribbling time notes on paper or trying to remember what they worked on in their head, so they can dump it all into the system at the end of the day.
If you want to do something more like track-as-you-go time tracking, you could:
1) Present a list of open projects/milestones. 2) Allow people to click to start a timer attached to the project/milestone 3) Allow people to click again to indicate they’re done working on the task. The timer will have automatically kept time for them, no manual entry needed.
This can get messy if you’re working at a place where there’s a lot of task-switching going on; that’s a potential point of friction when you try to track time as you go. But I do know a fair number of people who track time this way. I think this is how Harvest does it (I may be mistaken).
Right now my firm is using FreshBooks to track time and it’s OK. There are only 4 fields to fill out and one of them is optional. That’s good. Simple is good.
This is all very off-the-top of my head, so apologies if it’s a bit of a ramble.
Tim Grahl
on 09 Mar 12Could you give some background on why you removed milestones?
There’s a thread going in Answers about this that I’ve added to:
http://answers.37signals.com/basecamp/7667-milestones-in-the-new-basecamp-missing
As a project manager, there’s no way to look at the calendar for the week and see what each person has due and keep track of stuff that goes past due.
JF
on 09 Mar 12Now that is wild. Amongst the client-work folks I know, even the guys who do fixed-bid still track their time. I’d love to hear how you managed to not track time and still know what kind of profitability you were looking at on a project-to-project basis.
I know plenty of people in the consulting world that don’t track their time. They keep their overhead low and they charge a lot of money.
Cedric Hurst
on 09 Mar 12While I’m also personally disappointed that time-tracking isn’t in BCX from day one, I think it makes sense from the 37signals perspective. They could have waited a few months to launch the whole shebang, or launch what they have without time tracking and get the cool new stuff out in front of people sooner. That way, they can tweak the core product based on feedback and add time tracking into a more mature and battle tested product.
For me, though, I’ve psychologically conditioned myself to consider BCX dead until time tracking is added, or until an API is provided that allows us to integrate our own time tracking mechanisms internally. I’ve tuned out most of BCX awesomeness is bc otherwise I’ll be too tempted and anxious to start using it even though I know I can’t.
Sami
on 09 Mar 12If you are serious about having a time tracking convo, I’d be happy to spend some time over a coffee (Chicago local and customer)
JF
on 09 Mar 12Cedric: An API is coming soon. We’re working on it now.
DHH
on 09 Mar 12Tim, we want to get todos with due dates on calendar. So together with the events, that should hopefully be a great comprehensive solution.
bryan kennedy
on 09 Mar 12Bence
on 09 Mar 12I track time using TimeDoctor.com. but I want to integrate my Basecamp tasks into TimeDoctor. Plesae allow the TimeDoctor integration in Basecamp, why did you kill all the third party apps???
Also please restore the projects and todo templates.
Michael Metts
on 09 Mar 12I really respect 37s for being so responsive to customers.
That said, our team was beta testing, and we’re going ahead with the move to BCX without time-tracking.
We used time tracking in BCC mainly for data on where our time was spent and how much we were getting done.
BCX helps us get a better idea of how much work is getting done on our projects through daily progress, morning emails and the catch up area on each project.
Time-tracking was not implemented well in BCC . Some of us were using third party apps to track time. Some of us were inputting time manually and inaccurately. It was always an extra task. A monkey on our backs. We understood the importance, but it got in the way of getting work done.
The amount of time someone spent on something is no indication of how much they got done or how thorough their work is. BCX helps us keep track of those important things much more easily.
I know everyone’s needs for time tracking are different (client billing, payroll, etc.) but I’m glad you guys had the guts to leave it out of BCX .
Accidentally posted this comment in the previous post. Meant to join this conversation.
JC
on 09 Mar 12Kudos for this post. It shows a true willingness to listen to your loyal clients.
I’m sure it will lead to a time-tracking solution in BCX that is befitting of BCX’s new innovative interface and blazing speed, etc.
Looking forward to being able to make the shift to BCX in the near future.
Andrew
on 09 Mar 12Thanks for taking time-tracking seriously.
I expect the backlash from such a small percentage of your user base comes from the likelihood that users who are invested enough in Basecamp to use its time-tracking features are very heavily invested in Basecamp.
I know at our rather small company, it took a solid 2 years of working at it before we had fully integrated Basecamp into our workflow, and the thought we might have to repeat that process with another piece of software because the latest-and-greatest Basecamp wouldn’t support time-tracking, was a terrifying prospect.
Cedric Hurst
on 09 Mar 12@Sami @JF @DHH I’d also be up for a coffee/fireside chat at some point. I work and live only a couple blocks from 37signals HQ.
Jan Lukacs
on 09 Mar 12Hi Jason, any idea when you’ll open up the API for the new Basecamp? We’d love to integrate Paymo (our time tracking app) with the new version too. Integration with the old one still works… we have a bunch of users who do their PM in Basecamp and use us for time tracking.
Gavin
on 09 Mar 12@JH How did you get away with not tracking time when doing client work?
Markus Wild
on 09 Mar 12Good to hear that there is hope to get an even better time tracking solution within BCX. Jason, you should definitely look into this topic deeply and come up with a genius functionality as usual.
With classic we use Timy to collect our time entries and we have build a special filemaker file to make proper reporting out of the CSV exports. But this is a big compromise and no one likes it.
We would like to use a time tracking that is motivating and fun for our employees to quickly fill in complete data (being supported with this) and being kind of subtly rewarded for meeting the estimate or helping the company earning money.
The above ideas of having it compared with an estimate or counting against it would be great too.
Hope you can make it. Feel free to contact us for chatting about this valuable functionality.
Nathaniel Jones
on 09 Mar 12I work for a software shop which bills hourly, and for us, a way to track both estimates /and/ actual time would be fantastic.
Of course, if estimates don’t make it in, I’m going to jury-rig your API to track estimates via the Task Description field, so one way or another I’m really excited :)
JF
on 09 Mar 12Jan: API will be “soon”. We don’t have a release date yet, but we’re working on it.
Paul
on 09 Mar 12This has the making of a great set of posts on the process to understand a problem and design a solution. It will also be an opportunity to dive into the jobs model that @rjs is a fan of.
Time tracking is a feature – one possible solution. The interesting discussions are to be had around what job people “hire” time tracking to do and how they measure success.
As always, great to read what you guys are up to! Thanks for sharing.
Paul
Ross
on 09 Mar 12Don’t waste time tracking time. Join the Timesheet Revolution!
Crisply integrates with old Basecamp and will integrate with new Basecamp once the API is available.
Many of our users love Basecamp and do more with it since they know that Crisply is building a draft of their timesheet automatically from their Basecamp activity and data.
Crisply is Free for the first 5 users. Additional users are just $5 each per month.
Piotr
on 09 Mar 12How about joining forces with Amy Hoy?
She must have a ton of useful experience of delighting customers with Freckle. Just a thought :)
JF
on 09 Mar 12Spot on, Paul. That’s how we’re approaching this.
Paul N
on 09 Mar 12DHH: re: todos with due dates on the calendar: That would be huge for us and would allow me to roll this out to the whole crew right away.
As for time tracking, we’re not too concerned about it per-say since we bill fixed rate projects. However, some concept of Capacity Planning would be great so we know who’s booked up and who has availability in any given period. Perhaps adding an “estimate” field to todos or events and then comparing that against what they their capacity is set to? E.g., John has capacity of 4 days this week but his tasks with due dates in that time add up to 5 days so raise a flag.
Steven Piper
on 09 Mar 12Its really encouraging that 37Signals have decided to review this decision first – as there were no doubt lots of different feature requests.
I understand that some companies & agencies couldn’t care less about time tracking, but for those of us that track time to bill clients for, time tracking is absolutely paramount.
Thanks for tackling this head-on and so quickly.
ssdfq
on 09 Mar 12Maybe you guys should have named BCX something different. Instead of “the new basecamp”, it would be “the new product: banana”.
I’m sure less people would be saying things like “but you are rolling out a new version that does less than before.” ;-)
Amanda
on 09 Mar 12Praise jesus. I’m really, really satisfied that you decided to acknowledge this and discuss the process and thought behind your decisions. As someone in work flow and UX, what’s clear to me is that the data from the testing group wasn’t off, the actual testing group wasn’t indicative of your actual user base. That’s not uncommon.
With full respect to the process you go through, I do agree “months” is just too long. You don’t have to roll out the best, last version of time tracking. You can roll it out in phases and the existing system, allowing tasks to be tied to todos is likely a fine stopgap.
Yes, yes, we know you want to “fix” the problem of time tracking generally, but its somewhat unacceptable to leave customers with no alternatives. Classic isn’t an alternative. Its punishing users for being loyal and using the tools you gave them. They want to use BCX.
Please consider bringing time tracking into BCX as it currently is as a stop gap.
Mark
on 09 Mar 12Steve Jobs said this about problem solving and I love it when companies take this approach. Well done 37Signals!
“When you start looking at a problem and it seems really simple with all these simple solutions, you don’t really understand the complexity of the problem. And your solutions are way too oversimplified, and they don’t work.
Then you get into the problem, and you see it’s really complicated. And you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That’s sort of the middle, and that’s where most people stop, and the solutions tend to work for a while.
But the really great person will keep on going and find the key,underlying principle of the problem, and come up with a beautiful elegant solution that works.
Andrés
on 09 Mar 12Hi JF, when I first read about lack of time-tracking, saw it as a sort of drama; now I am just tempted of making my company “not to track time at all”! I am serious, time-tracking sometimes makes you an obsess of target accomplishment, and therefore too often makes you loose wide perspective on your work.
On the other hand, am I the only one to whom the lack of categories/tags or any other way of organizing files is the real deal broker? How can you manage to surf into huge amounts of info when files don’t have a tag system?
Loosing all the categories info on the existing project is the real reason that makes for us the migration impossible for the moment. Regards, A.
Jacob Sowinski
on 09 Mar 12We use time tracking as an “estimated vs. actual” type of log.
When we start a website project, I meet with my developers and designers to discuss all of the tasks and the estimated time to complete them.
While tasks are being executed, developers can log their time against the estimate. We know where we’re at according to the scheduled pace, and we can adjust if we need to.
It also helps estimating future projects. As others have mentioned, it’s good to reference that a particular task similar to a requested one actually took X amount of time.
I also like knowing the estimated time so we can determine how much man power we have to go towards a particular project. So a 120 hour project that spans 3 weeks, means that I have 1 person working 40 hours each week… or 4 developers working 10 hours each week. Knowing the remaining project time we estimated helps me allocate manpower to appropriate projects to ensure they’re completed on time as well.
So for me, having estimated and actual time for Projects, ToDo Lists and individual ToDos would be great. We use Toggl for now, but I’d love to keep it all in one place.
Chris
on 10 Mar 12Alright, so i know this post was about the hello’s and goodbye’s – but 47 of your 117 comments were talking about time tracking. Some were repeat people, some were you talking about it, but either way, 40% of those comments were a dialog on time tracking. You ran your tests, and “time tracking didn’t stand out as unique against the total field of feedback”, but it was in there obviously. And only 14% of current basecamp users use time tracking, ok, so put those 14% on and island. Fine.
To me, all of this leads me to believe you would rather have another company do the time tracking for you. Now, having two programs to keep track of your business is just not ideal. One of your biggest pitches on your website is “When you keep everything together in Basecamp, everyone stays up to date, everyone knows where everything is, and nothing ever gets lost.” Well, everything other than time tracking. So go let that get lost some where.
Calling time tracking a “blind spot” is really concerning. 14% is a blind spot? 40% of your comments about a topic on a post letting the world know you plan to not include time tracking in basecamp next isnt enough feedback? Now i know it was too late at this point to get it in there by launch. But you really had to have seen it coming. Bummer it had to come to a post like this.
(i know basecamp classic exists, i dont want the old, i want the new.)
I’m glad you guys are ready to buckle down on this and impress me with some awesome time tracking. It really would be great to have one tool to go to for everything.
Burberry outlet
on 10 Mar 12Your blog article is very interesting and fantastic, at the same time the blog theme is unique and perfect, great job.
Arik Jones
on 10 Mar 12Maybe someone can help me understand a little better. BCC’s time tracking was pretty basic (especially compared to tools like Harvest and a slew of others). However seems through various experiences of mine that if a company was serious about time-tracking, they didn’t look to BC to get it done. That was true even when BC was a huge non-negotiable part of every project.
Will your business melt if you have to use a different time-tracking app or stay with BCC for a while?
Ian
on 10 Mar 12Basecamp Classic: timetracking exists Basecamp: time tracking doesn’t exists, because you don’t understand it…
You are contradicted yourself.
Vlad
on 10 Mar 12That’s just a brilliant way of handling the feedback from the launch and I’m very glad to see my “dealbreaker” function make it to the top of the list of future features.
The other big function is the API (which seems to also be in the top requests). The truth is that we all use Basecamp in a different way (something quite understandable with such a large user base) so we can’t expect Basecamp to be the absolute perfect fit for all our needs, but the API provided us with the opportunity to take that raw data and build on it. Really looking forward to this as well.
IT Rush
on 10 Mar 12Deep understanding comes before designing, very interesting..
Adam Fairhead
on 10 Mar 12To me, time tracking is something better associated with billing rather than project management. I never used time tracking on Basecamp, since it’s a typically more of a financial consideration, not something that pushes a project forward towards completion.
I use Harvest for time tracking and invoicing, with a Project set up in there with all money matters gathered together. Then Basecamp takes over with getting the project done.
That said, if time tracking were to be added, it would be great to see integrations to make it worthwhile.
Ultimately though, I think Basecamp is a fantastic PM tool, and should be used as such, rather than as all things to all people.
Love the direction you’re going with the redesign, by the way.
Mario
on 10 Mar 12I wish Apple would have listen to editors and cutters, like 37signals is doing know to their customers, while they were designing FCPX. The disconection between Apple & Pro Customers since last year is very evident and affected deeply many companies that trusted them.
Glad to see 37signals is not following that path.
Christine
on 10 Mar 12We use basecamp for project management, collaboration + time-tracking against a project. We love that basecamp classic has an API that works with Freshbooks, as we have a number of associates that work with us on larger projects. While we’re excited about the new interface, we are concerned about losing a great all-in-one solution that made us more efficient and our book-keeper (and clients, very happy).
matt mcinvale
on 10 Mar 12completed the survey, please add time tracking again… we have an internal debate going that you plan on adding it as another paid add on, crossing my fingers that isn’t true.
Jared
on 10 Mar 12It’s easy to write of features that get 14% usage. Next time try thinking of it this way. Would you be ok dropping 14% of revenue? I’m guessing management would say no.
Emmet
on 10 Mar 12Forget time tracking, just work with some other people to do some custom integrations with your API. These guys were just on TechCrunch:
http://www.getharvest.com http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/10/harvest-co-founder-solve-a-real-pain-point-and-dont-be-afraid-to-charge-for-it-tctv
Olivier
on 10 Mar 12To me, time tracking goes along with billing therefore using Projectlog http://getprojectlog.com for that particular need.
Also, projects must be shared but invoicing is usually the job of one person so I like to keep things separate.
Will keep using Basecamp if you build time tracking though :)
Neil
on 11 Mar 12Respect to Jason and the Basecamp guys for their honesty, it’s humble and I believe that the way they are tackling the time tracking is beyond awesome, connecting with the end user personally is something I will take on board with projects that I do in future.
Gabriel
on 11 Mar 12Thanks for addressing this issue. Time tracking is super important for our company and is a deal breaker for us too. I’m anxious to move to the new Basecamp but right now, it’s not an option.
Henk Kleynhans
on 11 Mar 12I just started using Basecamp for a project I’m managing at an NPO. The project involves a large number of collaborators at different companies, which definitely presents some unique challenges! For the most part, Basecamp is working beautifully!
1. Time Tracking – I’m using RescueTime to do my time tracking for me automatically. It works for this specific project as I’m paid for days worked and have a PC dedicated to using on this project. I don’t need time-tracking from Basecamp, but I’d think if it’s “only used by around” 14% of your customers, that would be >1,000,000 projects using time-tracking.
2. The actual blind-spot for me would be the way permissions are implemented. Some of the information relating to this project is (highly) confidential to a subset of the users. I’m thus forced having to use email!
Or did I miss something on how to make certain files & discussions confidential?
Pablo Formoso
on 11 Mar 12When using Basecamp Classic we used TrackRecord App and it goes like charm. Form many of our clients improvents into their project are billed based on spent time on the task.
Since we have moved to new Basecamp we are looking forward and testing Harvest. Desktop and Mobile apps are great and it could solve the problem, but we have to introduce tasks manually…. Basecamp Classic didn’t have a time record app for it self and many of use 3rd part software to solve this.
IMHO introducing time tracking is not necessarily, but giving API access to 3rd part software will be grate. Im sure the great products around will cover the time count, reports anf billings as they are doing now.
alexpoell
on 11 Mar 12I agree with Pablo who said: Im sure the great products around will cover the time count, reports anf billings as they are doing now.
We never used the time tracking feature in BC classic. Since FEB 2011 we’re happy with Harvest using nearly all it’s features from project-based time tracking against different types of budgets up to timesheet approval or web-based estimates.
What made Harvest even more convenient for our team is Co-Op: a shared stream of time entries and a really simple interface to add or edit them.
Time tracking attached to Basecamp todos didn’t work for us.
Frank
on 11 Mar 12I worked as software engineer on a project management software suited for 30-100 people projects with a lot of freelancers. I am not a project manager nor a basecamp user : I can’t fill your survey. So I let some ideas in your comments. I am not sure it would fit with basecamp but it could help.
First : - People hate tracking their time (that could lead to bad data) - Project managers love grabing time sheets - In freelance-heavy projects data are used for paying almost everyone
That means : - Filling time sheet should be easy - Project manager should be able to see everything and have some numbers (weekly, monthly spent time…) - Time sheet data should be easily exportable to ERP - Filling time sheet should be lockable on a monthly or weekly basis.
What we did for that : - People who fill their time sheet inside their todo list, not in a separate screen (you are sure they will look at their todo list not the same for time sheet). They could change the day of their todo list to see todo/timesheet of past days. - It was easy to fill time: 4h, 8h and 1h were emphazed and accesible with one or two clicks. Other times were 15 minutes increments. - Total of hours worked for current day was clearly displayed on the todo-list. - Project manager had a dashboard to see quickly how long people worked during the day and can have access to all time sheets to see details and make corrections. - Filling time on task set a new start date and end date, so it gave additional informations and allowed project manager to spot problems more easily. - CSV export and REST API. - Given times were not modifiable once month changed.
BismarckTheMark
on 11 Mar 12What? This post is about teaching a company how it should do its work?
Why don’t you ask Bezos?
David
on 12 Mar 12It’s like going to Disneyland, only to find half the rides are closed when you get there. Big disappointment.
1) Time Tracking Missing The new Basecamp does not have time tracking?... so how do we track billing? pay employees? pay 1099’s? track how long projects take? compare one projects time to another projects time?...etc?
Only 19% of people used this feature??... amazing…people don’t know how great this feature is! – it’s one of the main reasons we use Basecamp…well Classic Basecamp…and will have to continue in Classic.
2) Cannot Transfer Private Items When transferring to the new Basecamp you cannot move private items?... 95% of my classic Basecamp is private and I want it to remain private… because we only want clients to have access to the finished files or comments we select as not private for their feedback.
I was very excited about the idea of the new look and feel… and now… I’m very disappointed and 100% cannot use or even transfer projects to try out – without these critical features.
Mikael Siirilä
on 12 Mar 12For us time tracking is not in the core of our business. Most projects (identity design, webdesign, publications) involve zero time tracking.
However after initial projects some client relationships evolve into “time tracking relationships”. Clients have constant small needs that and cared for. Thats when time tracking becomes useful for us. Small updates, design-tasks, coding-tasks, changes etc are tracked and billed by the hour. The client gets a Basecamp printout attached to the invoice.
With time tracking small updates get billed and don’t end up forgotten or buried under email conversations. Clients appreciate being able to see time tracking data in Basecamp as it gets logged.
Basecamp Classic has a perfect time tracking implementation in my opinion. Add a nicer report printout and its exactly what it should be.
Henk Kleynhans
on 12 Mar 12One more thing…
Why is not possible to send emails to a Basecamp “dropbox”? I’m having to save and upload important project related emails manually.
Henk
JohnK
on 12 Mar 12I’m sure the guys will eventually knock out a home run for time tracking but I think the situation shows other startups how scratching your own itch can potentially backfire.
Harun
on 12 Mar 12Can we have time tracking for different companies, not just for the owner? You see, we work with different freelancers and external suppliers, so it would be great if they could also track the time they spend on our projects.
Eon
on 12 Mar 12“We have close to zero understanding of the problem right now.”
So why time tracking was available in Basecamp Next?
Eon
on 12 Mar 12I mean – Basecamp Classic
Zach
on 12 Mar 12A lot of people seem to be getting their panties in a bunch over how the new BaseCamp doesn’t have time-tracking – as Jason said, BaseCamp Classic has it and no one is being forced to switch. I do realize though, it’s a shiny new toy and like 5 year-olds, we must have now!
I’m thinking this is similar to how Apple handled removing the CD drive when they released the Air. Not everyone used it and it was holding Apple back from focusing on more important things (like making that baby thin!). Sure some people might have been pissed, but the Super-Drive works just the same and in the end, everybody moved on. I think there’s a lesson that can be learned with 37S taking their time on seeing if this is a worthwhile venture. Should they just put it in there because some users used it – and even if they did, could it ever stack up against the big guys, like Harvest? Probably not in my honest opinion, which is why I also support the idea of working something out with Harvest.
While some may try, there’s certain things you just can’t touch if you approach them in the same way. If someone were to make a Facebook copy called Headbook – and it did everything the exact same, it wouldn’t survive – not because the features are not there, but because they’re not offering anything new that can’t be done better with something that is already out there and has a history.
I say – push forward with making BaseCamp the best project management tool you can – don’t sweat what I consider… the small stuff :)
Gill Westwood
on 12 Mar 12BCC is brilliant and has transformed how we work. BCX looks wonderful and is intuitive and speedy. We fell in love as we tried out the demo – then were quickly disillusioned by:
So, sorry BCX – we have a huge crush on you but we won’t be taking the relationship any further until templates, milestones and timetracking have been addressed. Not quite clear why features have actually been lost, although it may be, as someone posted above, that you’ve gone ahead and released something really good while working on the next stage to duplicate other features and make it perfect.
BCC remains Mr Right!
Magirus
on 12 Mar 12@BismarckTheMark: Deploying service or designing solutions as 37s are doing it is all about bringing value to your customers. And that involves a huge amount of learning from your customers and getting into the(ir) problem domain.
Would you prefer getting a solution your service provider thinks is the “big thing” and you uncovering the fact that its completely not working for you?
Lisa
on 12 Mar 12Just filled out the survey.
In general, we would love something similar to Time Doctor or Odesk, where the system takes screen shots or something like Crisply, where it is less of a manual process and more of an automated thing. Our team members would LOVE it if they didn’t need to manually enter time every week!
Also, we would LOVE to have the ability to compare estimates to actuals. We’re currently using Project Recon (desktop app that syncs to Basecamp projects automatically) to track time and we’re using another third-party tool called Safobudget (which integrates with Classic) to compare estimates to actuals every week or two. Would love to see both of these combined into NEXT out-of-the-box without the need for third-party tools.
That said, I know that you can’t be everything to everyone, and it sounds like there are a wide variety of interpretations of what the term “project manager” means. Here at my agency, we tend to follow the more traditional definition of what a PM at a very large-scale enterprise would be responsible for doing. I don’t know if that fits with 37signals’ vision or the new NEXT paradigm, though, since it seems more focused on internal/product work or smaller one-man shops.
If we only had an API… :)
Just kidding. I know it’s coming.
Lisa
Fred Jones
on 12 Mar 12@Zach-
I think the better metaphor is the multi-cam tool in Final Cut Pro X. In Apple’s case, they either ran out of time or didn’t understand that many studios (maybe only 5% of their customer base) needed multi-cam in their editor. Apple said, “Well you can just stay with Final Cut 7. Many of their professional customers said, “yeah, or we can move to something that isn’t as sexy like Premier but at least they’ll keep updating it.”
Apple was right, you could stay with Final Cut 7, but is it realistic in the long-run? No. Same here.
Apple took many months to add it to FCP X, and I expect the same from 37S. They’ll likely have to develop the API in addition to anything they do in BCX… and that will take time. I’m happy to wait, as long as it comes sooner rather than later.
However, I wouldn’t compare a missing DVD drive in a ultra-portable laptop (where you can still buy an external drive from Apple) with the business need of 20% of the customer base. You can learn to live without a DVD but you can’t learn to live without time-tracking… at least if you track time.
Zach
on 12 Mar 12@Fred
Appreciate the input – at the end of the day, I was indirectly mentioning just using Harvest for time-tracking. That’s what Harvest is good at – time tracking and invoicing. BaseCamp is good at project management. Does project management coincide with time-tracking? Yes and no – completely depends on how you work as a company (as 37S said – they never used it to begin with). At the end of the day, I’m happy to pay for a service that makes my life easier, but if we have to sacrifice the time it takes for BaseCamp to implement this (compared to fixing/improving on existing features that it already has—like private messages), then I’d choose the latter. Thanks!
Dusty Smith
on 12 Mar 12Sorry to keep beating the timekeeping drum… still don’t get the logic (I read the explanation – no sale) behind not including the current “Classic” functionality in the updated offereing.
Time tracking is, like many project management related items, a “black hole” of feature requirements. That being said, what you had, while simplistic, worked OK for me.
Love your overall product a lot… but you should have known better than to eliminate a feature…. the 14% is obviously a very vocal contingent.
by the way, where do we go to see the new version? Except for this blog, I have heard nothing from you guys about how to upgrade if I wanted to.
Fred jones
on 12 Mar 12@Zach-
Fair enough. I’ll have to give Harvest a look… it seems a lot of people speak highly of it. I have sort of poo-pooed it since it didn’t tie into our projects but maybe the benefits outweigh the additional effort. Thanks!
ploogman
on 13 Mar 12lack of time tracking was really vanity – sorry to say – I love you guys
redesigning the core components, with some changes pretty nit picky, and leaving out time tracking was a mistake – plain and simple
you say only 14% of your users were using it – that’s substantial – if you keep dropping 14% of users you would not be saying that
the fact is that nobody is doing time tracking that well and making it simple – you do know enough about time tracking to have an opinion and put out a beta module – the 1 on 1 interviews, backpedaling, is not going to cut it
you know some deisgners, programmers, architects, lawyers, PR firms, ad firms, are all tracking time, for example – just track time and apply it to a project – then export for billing purposes as necessary even manually cut/paste – or just use for internal management – i.e. how much time are we actually spending on that $350 project? is the revenue worth it?
you always say have an opinion – and you stated it basically – that you do not want to be bothered tracking your time so why add it to the new basecamp – similar argument to why you stopped doing sites for others and began marketing your own web apps, etc. – but don’t expect that to sound helpful to everyone that needs to track time
sure there are other time tracking apps out there, but people want some clarity, a single table in the basecamp could accomplish a simple time tracking – even if it does not even total the time – push out a new seat of the pants time module and do what you always talk about – forget edge cases – but don’t act like time tracking is an edge case
I’m a huge fan Jason and David, seriously, of all your apps and your business tips, books, etc. A lot of us look up to you guys but I am just a little unsure about this situation. Reminds me of when Oracle came out with some software and expected the users to conform their accounting departments and methods to the software instead of the other way around – you should bolt on a basic time tracking function for projects and leave a little rope for your customers to hang themselves – ok, that is a weird analogy, but it does not have to be a major feature with a lot of revisions and tweaking now, remember your advice to ship and tweak later? this is a good time to try – when you get bigger you get more nervous and I get that but you’ve got world class minds and it will be Ok
Dan
on 13 Mar 12Hey… looking forward to checking out new Basecamp… just wanted to add my $0.02 and why I track time. Take as my interpretation of my business situation, it may not be applicable to other Users.
I find myself tracking time occasionally for some purpose and then stopping when that purpose is no longer compelling.
I track time driven by some other external driver usually:
– Give me ammunition to communicate some issue with our projects (e.g. spending too more time than we thought in some domain, requirements gathering, design reviews, etc.)
– Mandate from another stakeholder for billing purposes or detailed resource accounting
– Personal need to assess where I am actually spending my time (rather than guessing after the fact)
I am not in a professional services environment where I have clients and need to generate and track invoicing
Hope this is an informative data point. Keep up the good work!
Vince LaVecchia
on 13 Mar 12We’ve always stayed away from processes that do not add value to the work or people’s lives. Time tracking simply does not add that much value for the hassle. It also has a potentially negative effect on the culture here and what we choose to emphasize as important for our business. That being said, there have been times when we need to do it, and there are alternative methods, some that work much better than Basecamp ever did for time tracking. And, we’ve been very profitable, funded our own growth, maintained quality relationships, etc… at Instrument. All without time tracking. Look forward to getting used to the new Basecamp.
Eric
on 14 Mar 12Since comments are closed on “launch” post:
One feature that we use every single day is “Upload a new version” for Files
We can’t switch until you ad this feature.
Denzo
on 14 Mar 12Play and stop buttons that (start and stop a timer) next to a task would awesome!
Jordan
on 14 Mar 1217% of paying customers used it, but the function was also not available for the lowest cost version of your software.
I’ve been using another todo list to track time. That works for me, but would be no good for a business who is actually using basecamp to track their billable hours.
With that said, I’ve always wanted time tracking, but couldn’t justify the upgrade to a more expensive account to get it.
I’m now working for another company and I’m looking for alternatives to Active Collab for them. They rely heavily on AC for time tracking currently, so the lack of time tracking in BC would become a non-starter.
Hannah86
on 14 Mar 12Great blog, really got me thinking if my tracking really covers all my bases
Ilona
on 14 Mar 12Very nice approach to “getting things done”. Taking time to understand the problem before jumping into “solutions”. Inspirational….
Gerald
on 14 Mar 12Getting things done without timetracking in your company or as a freelancer? Hard to believe, especially when it comes down to your calculation of profitability.
Peter
on 14 Mar 12I would love to see not only time-tracking implemented in the new Basecamp, but individual timers for tasks so that I can time things directly on the site. This feature is actually fairly well implemented on Apollo (another online project manager) but I feel that you could probably improve on that. The absence of this feature is the one thing holding me back from signing up (again).
Josh
on 14 Mar 12“We have close to zero understanding of the problem right now.” ...there wasn’t/isn’t a problem. Coke…er….Basecamp Classic handles time tracking nicely. Why do we need to over analyse everything? I’ve learned FROM YOU GUYS to keep things simple…simple works. How do we use it? Simple…everyone tracks their time….each person has a cost….I bill the client at a nice mark up on that cost * number of hours worked on a project. It ain’t rocket surgery folks….
Josh
on 14 Mar 12...also curious…and not looking for an actual answer, but the 14% that use time tracking, what percent of REVENUE does that 14% of customers make up? My guess would be larger than 14%.....
Jan Reinhardt
on 16 Mar 12We use, like (and need!) time tracking exactly as it is in Basecamp Classic. A long and in-depth redesign process is undesired from our side. Of course we could switch to a different/external time tracking solution. But why, tell me why…
Heather
on 16 Mar 12We track time on all projects! The Classic works perfectly!
Joelle
on 16 Mar 12I’ll be honest, I didn’t even realized Basecamp offered time tracking. Currently, I track time in Freshbooks. If there were a way to connect these two things, so we could track time in Basecamp and have it sync with our invoicing, I bet that would be a coup.
This discussion is closed.