I’m having trouble convincing my staff to use Basecamp. I manage a geographically dispersed department within a large corporation that has number of cost reduction projects underway. My motivation behind using Basecamp was to use the Messages forum to reduce the amount of email and provide a record of discussions, to introduce some simple project management, to provide a central place to store our files and to use the Writeboard to collaborate on important documents. After having implemented Basecamp for 1 month I find that staff are not logging in or participating in the discussions. While some of my staff sees the potential for the application others complain that Basecamp adds to their workload and that email is a good enough tool to use for doing their job.

I’m wondering if others have experienced the adoption challenge and have any advice on how to overcome it?

Well Chris, I find that if you can strap them down and inject them with a serum, that kind of works. But its the old saying: “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”

I have had trouble recently with a potential client. He contacted me via Sitepoint Marketplace, and said he had a mountain of work for me. That was three months ago and I have had nothing from him apart from the “It’s coming” routine. He said he was so busy and had trouble organising stuff, so I recommended Basecamp, he signed up but never lasted the trial and he said it was doing his head in. Basically its not Microsoft, its not a Windows application so its no good.

For me it turned my business around because I could organise everything I needed to. So now if I have a potential client who is not interested in using a great tool like Basecamp then I tend not to work with them, as chances are they are not on the same wavelength as me.

Thanks Nick for the input. I think the root cause of my adoption problem is that these folks are not use to working in a structured project-based environment. This is my 6th week in this role and I feel like my staff is running around like chickens with missing heads, jumping from one priority to the next. It’s got to stop. I think that Basecamp can bring some structure to what we’re doing. I’d love a serum but I think I think I’m going to have to do some good old people managing to get the proper work flow and discipline in place.

Does anyone else have some adoption war stories they are willing to share?

I have managed to get several departments in a large, non-project oriented work environment with nebulously defined priorities to adopt Basecamp. It took a while, but I found the key was to show a handful of the most driven individuals (project leaders or similar roles) across 3 or 4 departments how Basecamp can help them “organize the clutter” around projects—files, to-dos, messages, etc. They used Basecamp on a couple of important projects and that “win” amplified the interest in others and it took off from there.

It did (and still does) take a lot of patience, effort and personal investment in terms of time and energy to answer questions and walk people (repeatedly in some cases) through basic Basecamp functions, but this is extremely important in the initial phase as the early adopters (if you pick the right ones) are typically the ones who will evangelize this through the rest of the organization.

Adam,

I think your suggestion about todo lists could also go a long way for getting people to use BC. I have a project that only I can see for this very purpose. I think other employees could benefit from being able to put their own info in a private list, it might help them use BC more. Otherwise people are maintaining actions in BC as well as their PDA’s, e-mail programs, whatever.

Or…if users could set up a personal backpack page w/in the BC account…

Hi Chris,

I’m pretty much in the same situation as you’re; moving away from management by e-mail and start to organize files, discussions and requests for each project. I also face a approval process challenge which I hope the advatage to make things public in Bascamp will solve.

My only advice I can give yu is to spend a lot of time with your Basecamp users. Don’t throw it in the face on them, then they will just see it as something ”new and stupid”. Use a transistion period of at least a couple of weeks.

Give them 7 days to try the system, after that you can all have an evaluation session.

Adam, Joakim, thanks for the perspective. An evaluation session is definitely in order. And yes, despite the simplicity of the system you do need to spend a lot of time with the users.

Great idea but here’s the thing: my company is standardized on IE6 and forces the Homepage to be the company Intranet. I know there are work arounds though…

How to convince them? Results. The tools allow for greater efficiency, focus and organization. It is only a matter of time before a less functional method of project management leaves a document missing or a meeting missed. “My” method has gained popularity as others see that it works.

1. Basecamp (and other collaboration software) really works best on projects rather than daily activities.
2. The sooner you get all of your projects into Basecamp the better
3. Everyone with a significant role on a project needs to use Basecamp (this is a bit of a challenge in my organization since not everyone wants to use the application and they don’t all report to me)
4. Management derives the most immediate benefit from Basecamp because all the projects are nicely tracked in one place.
5. Staff with minimal project activity view collaboration software as ‘just another tool they have to use’.

I came across what I thought was a nice discussion on team collaboration at http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=2263.

Thx for the conclusions – do you have a good suggestion of how to use BC with approval processes?

Joakim, I’m not quite following you: Can’t you just assign a ToDo associated with a milestone?

Garryr – I agree, for example, milestones that are 30 days late probably means that project isn’t progressing (due lack of resources etc.)! With emails I probably would have just forgotten the request!