in this video I'm gonna be sharing my eight years of experience with using project management tool called Basecamp so let's find out if the Basecamp is a good fit for you hey guys this is Yanni's and in today's episode I'm gonna be reviewing a project management tool called Basecamp so Basecamp as been great in my business I've been managing in multiple projects like website development project as well as multiple mobile game development projects and it's all been done within the Basecamp I think it's extremely important to have and leverage this kind of a tools especially if you're working with a team because I think everybody needs to know who is responsible about what and how things are moving forward in general so that you can have a transparency and understanding how things are developing in your business just a quick disclaimer this is not a paid review and I just want to share with you guys my personal experience on how I've been using it what I think is good about the tool what I think is not so good about the tool so you can guys really kind of understand and make a decision whether it's a right tool for you or whether it's not I'm also not using base camp by myself at the moment I stopped using it about nine months ago or about a year ago and I've moved to the different software but that's definitely not to say that the base camp is not a good project management tool I do think and I do believe that it is a great tool it just so it wasn't able to offer well for the features that I really wanted to see in a project management tool but the base camp has other features that are really strong that my new management software cannot really handle as good as Basecamp good good good so it's some some things has improved some things has slacked but I just wanted to let you know so you were well aware of that so without further due let's jump into the tool and let's check it out so this is how it looks like when you log into your dashboard you can see your company here but we're gonna be going down to this section here projects and I'm gonna be using a sample project to show you all the features now this is how the features look like obviously they're laid out here obviously there are six main features and then we're also gonna look in a couple of top bar features at the end of the video so let's start to look at how it operates in general I just want to show you a structure a little bit so once you go to any particular section you have this top bar here that shows you where you're at and if you want to navigate back you just click on the icon and then you can go to the particular section or you can just go back to obviously the home layout now if you go to the message boards you'll see that you can go deeper into the message itself and then you can just navigate one step back at the time alright alright so let's start with the first feature which is campfire camphor is like chatting tool so is something like Skype integrated into the base camp and you can use this feature to communicate with other members of the team I have to say that I personally didn't use this feature a lot because of so I'm running online business and obviously the members of the team are from the different places in a world and we just wouldn't work on the same time so I didn't find it very useful but for those who are working pretty much at the same time this can be quick way how to kind of internally communicate and get things resolved alright so that would be about this particular thing now let's go back so let's jump into the message boards now message boards are like announcements that you put out and let everybody know about about the news I use these a lot and especially to let people know that we're gonna be working with a new person or with a new client or just inform everybody about some specific news so it's pretty straightforward you create a message you name it they also have some cool likens now which I haven't seen before and and and then you just title it let's do this feedback and just type in anything you want to let people know as I said I would use it quite a lot for feedback because we were developing multiple apps so if I send it out for external review then I would I would come here and I would copy the email from them from the other company or the person who would review the game so so that is how it would be I have to say that the the actual like tools that are available in this in this menu are really cool because obviously have wide range of options you can you can do a lot of different things you can change the color and everything which is not that actually available in other project management software's that I have used so you can go pretty deep you can in bullet point and you can change the text size and set bold things out so it's really handy when you want to kind of customize your your your text so once you're done another cool feature is if I ever wanted to just inform part of the team I don't have to get everybody involved just to create like extra noise so I can only choose the people that really needs to deliver that really needs to get this particular message so I can only let two people in my team know about a new thing if only two people will be involved in you know giving opinion or whatever so I save it and then I post the message and then pretty much people can come in and read and leave some feedback and then we can discuss it in here of course you can attach pictures and files I have to say the files have been really good use particularly because I was working on multiple mobile games and obviously we could attach the builds and then as we as we put in new builds out we can discuss them and and obviously get get a feedback and everything so this is this has been working out great as well and then a little tiny feature people can actually clap for you they think that obviously it's a great news or obviously they've been praised right so that's about the message boards let's move further to the next section and it's the two deuce well this is a this is the core of the whole project management right because this is this is I think this is the like core feature of everything so the the the the principle that it works is obviously you have a list of their things so if we go to let's say this section episode 32 then you you can create a different types of the tasks assign a different people who are gonna be responsible and set a date by which the task needs to be completed which is the main things that you want to know you want to know when it's gonna be done and you want to know who is responsible about it so if this starts hasn't got a date I can just set it and any date I want I'd say 30 years Save Changes so it needs to be done by various now here so that's about that's about to do and another thing about it is they can be also discussed same as a normal topics so again I would I would just leave my feedback anything that I want and I can just comment it again a same notification feature like in in the message board I can you know let as many people as I think need to be involved in this conversation so and and yeah then I make changes and then I had this comment and obviously as I posted all these people here were notified about what I just said so I think it carries out very good infrastructure in terms of informing and communication and it's also attached to the individual tasks which is really really great about this contact planning at all and planning software so yeah that's that's pretty much it on the tasks on the core feature let's move on to the next thing which is going to be the schedule right the schedule feature is pretty much like a calendar view and you can see what's coming up obviously we can see that somebody is in holiday on a particular days so everybody stays in Dwarf formed in the team and I have to say we didn't use this feature very much because I don't think it gives enough visual feedback I mean you know they could make the calendar bigger and kind of include it in there instead of just instead of just you know adding adults and then having like a huge list of the items so that's why we didn't kind of use it quite a lot so that's about the scheduling but yes you can use it and you can let people know about where you are so nobody's kind of looking for you when you are in a holiday the next thing is automatic check-ins this is like automatic email feature that you can enable as you can see here people have come somebody has set up the reminder do you have any ideas for a future show and obviously eight people are being asked every Monday at 9:00 a.m. so I think it's a good for like a development things something that you want to I can improve so people are kind of reminded to kind of share their opinion all the time I did try to use this feature I had set up a reminder by asking people whether they have any issues if they get stuck but then after some time I kind of took it off because I felt that you know it's not a good thing to only ask them if they have issue they have to know when they're stuck and I wanted to let me and now instantly rather than wait wait when they get the reminder so and that's why again I didn't didn't didn't pretty much use it a lot and the last one on the on the boards is at the docks the docks and files obviously you can create new documents you can create new folders and so this is gonna be first and and you can create folders and you can arrange all the different types of their items obviously you can throw the pictures in or on anything it's really cool it's all drag-and-drop so you can rearrange the things in the right places and kind of move them about you can add the Google Docs in here as well as great I just like a fresh document we did use quite a lot of Google Docs during our development process so we didn't really kind of created separate documents in here but the great thing about these are that again you can not find people and obviously everybody will be up to date right so that's about the main features also wanted to touch on a couple of other things that I used quite a lot and one of them features were latest activity so if I checked in in a project and I want to see what's going on this is a great section a latest activity where you can see all the latest things has been going on so you can actually very quickly pick up like on how productive they has been who has done what and obviously what has been actually happening so you can click into each of these and kind of check these things out and another thing that I used quite a lot was reports and obviously when you go into the reports you can filter out all the tasks that for example has been overdue at the moment this is a good thing to see nothing is over to and everything is going fine but sometimes there would be a specific tasks that are completed so I would check this section every day pretty much also used it to kind of when I had the meetings with the particular people I would just type them in to see what they've been working on like I just started by myself and I can see that I had to organize the team meeting yeah so that is pretty much everything from the main features one thing I didn't show you that I think is really good is drag and drag and drop tool and I showed you drag and drop tool in the docs but it's also same with tasks so I can rearrange tasks within the task list or I can actually bring over tasks from another task list so it kind of changes the layout and everything so it can be helpful if you move things from one week to another if your weekly task or something like that so you can you can then do that and so yeah that's about it I think I did cover pretty much all the features but yeah so that is how Basecamp looks on inside so I hope you found it useful and to see how you can go through all the features and what it kind of offers inside before you go and give it a try now what I really liked about Basecamp and I told you at the beginning of the video that I don't use it anymore then I think the strong side of the Basecamp is infrastructure in having a tasks with very well-developed structure so that you can comment you can attach files and you can kind of build this flow where you can discuss and resolve things so that's unlike really strong side infrastructure and being able to you know not fight people and keep that communication very very close on a weak side what I would say and what was the reason why I moved away from the base camp was the fact that it wasn't as as good in visual representation it was really hard for me to kind of grasp the whole general view of how project is moving ahead and this is very important for me as a project manager who is in charge of making sure that things are going forward to see the general overall picture how things are developing and what's lacking behind where I need to focus my attention of course they do have this reporting tool which was introduced lately I mean I'm saying lately but it was some time ago but what is one of the latest features that I saw on the platform and you can go and sort out the tasks by incompleted by the person and it kind of improve the things a little bit but I still wanted to see like a general view of how things are moving forward and on the downside obviously I migrated to another another software which is called team Gantt and on Tim Gunn it's much more improved and there is like a big calendar you can see each task obviously how it's been like progressing and how much complete is that and who is responsible the same thing but it's much more visual and but I wouldn't say that oh you know Basecamp is bad and ting and is great there is some huge downsides on a team and as well my new project management software and if you talk in terms of these tasks and how easy it is to attach things and keep the communication going but that's again the downside because you cannot attach the real files you can only link X to external sources like you have to use a Dropbox or you can use Google Drive to can link out and then get the file whereas in Basecamp it was just there you just download it from there and you leave the comment so that is kind of a downside on my new project management software and also I don't know how it's built but if the Basecamp was more of kind of web tool and it's just clicked really quickly and it worked really fast then team Dan for some reason is built and some kind of pop up or something and every time I click something it just loads and loads and loads and I don't know on what it's built so there is not only like a good side on one software and and bad side another one and they both have minuses and pluses and you have to evaluate what's what you need the most for your kind of projects if your project manager and if you're managing the project or business then I definitely think that you know investing your money in a good project management software is absolutely must because it's gonna help you to stay clear and achieve your goals so much quicker and it's also going to be beneficial for your team because they're gonna be up to date with what's going on what needs to be done you know attaching the documentation to make sure that things are clear and executed with required time frame so and definitely if you are managing the projects or running a business you know project management tool is absolutely a must so if you like what you see in the video then I would suggest to go to base come calm and give it a try because the only way you're gonna know that the software is right for you is by actually trying it out it does have a free trial so you're not risking anything you don't even need to put your card details in and cancel it later it just straight forward you register and you are ready to go so create some tasks stick with it and see how it works for you and your team if you liked the video make sure you give it a thumbs up and subscribe for more videos like this this is me Yanni's from driven by goal helping you to achieve your goals and I'll see you guys in the next episode bye it is [Music]