I kind of fell into using Basecamp. I was recommended to use this software on a major image collection and delivery project, and I used it for some months without ever realising what it was capable of, and it was only when I got some advice from a more experienced user that I saw the possibilities. It is an impressive tool, and quite deserves its current cult reputation.

Still, the fact that I was using it yet not seeing what it could do is, I think, an indication of one of the problems of the program. It's not very well documented. I watched videos on YouTube, even bought a book called Teach Yourself Basecamp, but like many books with a title like this, it gave me screenshots of what I already knew, and didn't reveal the things I didn't know.

I still have not really started using it fully, so any or all of the comments below may be invalidated by someone with more experience. Nonetheless, I am very happy to be contradicted. Plus, any criticism I have is because I think it is a very interesting tool, and worth thinking about carefully - my criticism is really an encouragement! Here then is my list of problems with it:

• Too many emails generated – as with using Sharepoint, users can be overwhelmed by emails that aren't always significant, and hence lose interest in the tool as a whole.
• Difficult to navigate – as the project grows, you often need to ask other users where a document has been placed in Basecamp.
• Too many posts – stuff that has been superseded is of little relevance and should be de-emphasised
• It's not easy to make key documents very prominent. For example, most projects have one or two documents that are regularly changed and which need to be seen in their latest version.
• There are insufficient tools for closing a discussion. Anyone can comment on anything, and the result is a bit like a trade union club trying to agree Labour Party policy: a hotchpotch. You long for an administrator to say “this discussion is now closed”.
• Paradoxically the milestone tracking is, I find, the least effective of its many tools. Perhaps in this respect it is like other project management tools, that don’t help you get anywhere, but simply points you out as a failure when you don’t meet the date specified on the schedule.

In case you think this is too negative, there are definite plusses to using Basecamp! For example, the to-do lists are very good – you can bat them back and forth with people until the task is complete.

On balance, it’s far more user-friendly than something like MS Project, a tool that doesn't encourage project completion at all, in fact it prevents participation by members of the project team who don't have a copy of the (very expensive) software. But, interestingly, Basecamp doesn’t replace Project – Basecamp doesn’t contain a real scheduling tool at all!