Let's flashback to an '09 post by Erskine Design's Jamie Pittock: Project management is easy. In it, he offers some good tips for getting the most out of Basecamp To-Do lists.
The obvious answer to avoiding forgetting things is to write them down. Project related things could be tasks, ideas, requirements, feature requests, websites to look at, something a client’s said: anything at all.For all of the above we create a to-do list in Basecamp called the Project Backlog: this is where we write everything down that needs to be remembered and isn’t actionable by a specific person in the near future (more on what to do in that case soon).
Some Basecamp specific tips for you:
- empty to-do lists are automatically moved to the completed lists sidebar; to force the list to stay put, even when empty, add a to-do labeled “———————————” at the top of the list;
- add a description to the list and explain its purpose at the start of the project to both project and client teams;
- don’t assign items in this list to anyone; they aren’t actionable yet, so you don’t want them to appear in anyone’s global to-dos yet.
The main thing is to get everyone using it and to not be precious about what goes in there.
There's also a good section on using lists for weekly reviews. Read the full piece.
