Connected-uk.com » basecamp

Taking time to secure our code bases

Andy — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 08:54:52 +0000

Often we’re asked “can’t you change it quickly whilst I’m on the phone?” or “It’s only a quick tweak, can you do it straight away?”.
To project manage, we use Basecamp and like most of the big boys in the internet/software development world (including Google Android), our development environments use a host of version control, testing and deployment systems including Git and Capistrano to name a couple. Basecamp enables collaborative management of changes and our develpoment environment enables complete version control over all our websites/applications, branched development, more secure testing and living of projects, real world test environments and complete backup of the our code bases.
It does however mean that ‘quick tweaks’ take just a few minutes longer to be completed – small price to pay for a fully tested application that just works? An added bonus of this slight ‘delay’ means some of our partners think twice about why they are changing things, if it’s really required and if so, how it can be better organised.
We had an occurrence last year where one of our web server had a hardware failure, the quickest solution was to reinstall on a completely new server. Our partners, Rackspace, very quickly configured the new server and after a bit of configuring, we were able to ‘deploy’ four websites, a host of web applications and micro-applications, the systems which communicate to the clients data warehouse, eShot providers and fulfillment houses, complete with the VITES databases (containing all the visitor learnings/tracking data) all fully functioning in only a few hours.
Take a look at this simple Deployment Process diagram Sam knocked up to see how it works.

New and better Basecamp coming

Andy — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:11:50 +0000

The makers of Basecamp (37signals) have recently improved the way the user login system works. The change will make your account more secure, easier to sign in should you ever forget your details and also allow faster and easier switching between multiple Basecamp accounts. Part of this will be a new ‘launchpad’.

Sometime during December, whilst logging in, you’ll be asked to create a new username and password. that’s it!

You can, if you wish, visit Basecamp now to create your new username now, it should only take a few seconds and you won’t have to do it again. Thanks for your understanding.

Project management…collaboration stylee

Martin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:45:42 +0000

We rolled out Basecamp company-wide in January 2008 and now manage around 70 live projects in a wonderfully collaborative manner. It dramatically changed how the organisation worked internally and many of the clients subsequently took up using the application themselves for other projects.

Changing from an ugly and ill-formed email-based system into a simple, fast and cloud-enabled application has reduced costs, increased control and brought a whole host of really important improvements to how we work.

It’s not just us!

Seth Godin, a kind of visionary in this new world actually makes the radical suggestion of “Do not approve any project that isn’t run on Basecamp“. That is, I’ll grant you, a little extreme but as the the post is aimed at “catch-up” audiences he’s probably right – we’d certainly agree with him.

ps: If you do sign up using the link above then, thanks, we get a small reduction in our monthly bill, ta x

Coordination vs cooperation vs collaboration

Sean — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 08:59:39 +0000

This came out of the realisation that traditional project management techniques of timed-tasks, set-in-stone milestones and rigid development specifications were hampering what we delivered to our clients when any methodology we use should enhance it. Yes, it makes life *simpler* but at the cost of *mechanising* the process which we felt stifled creativity and brought undue and wholly inappropriate pressure on our operational delivery arm. It has been a rough ride so far, milestones have slipped and tasks occasionally are left undone but, and it’s a big but, the quality of output has gone through the roof and we also seem to have a far better *team* understanding of what we have to do. This sea-change in approach started off with the selection of Basecamp as our project tool and very quickly we found our client buying into the approach and collaborating much closer and far more effectively. Which brings me to a lovely definition I read recently that covers collaboration, posted by Mark Elliot (who wrote a thesis on the subject) I thought it was worth repeating

*coordination* is required for all collective activities (bringing the parts together in a way that yields synergy) * cooperation* employs linear procedures to leverage collective potential (if each participant does exactly ‘x’, then a predictable ‘y’ is the result) *collaboration* is different in that through nonlinear creative processes (no one knows exactly what they have to do until they do it, and even then the outcome is unknown) a shared understanding is created amongst the participants – one unique to those participants and that collaboration. By way of example; coordination = a web search: bringing together parts of the web in a way that creates meaning, i.e. synergy. cooperation = social bookmarking: if many people tag their webpages using a particular platform, and a particular procedure, a resource much larger than any individual could develop may be generated collaboration = Wikipedia editing: read an entry, contribute in any number of modes (form, content, discussion, etc) and from an infinite number of perspectives (the multiplicity of opinion and creative volition) one becomes part of a highly complex negotiation of a shared understanding (no one owns or comprehends the whole but contributes a part of it).

Thank you Mark, it was very illuminating

Less really is more

Sean — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 11:41:50 +0000

I think we all realise that software systems are getting more and more complex as time goes on. Microsoft (Vista), Adobe (PDF Reader, Photoshop) et al are all building more and more features into their applications. is this good? Well, the folks at 37signals seem to think this is wrong.

I’m inclined to agree with them and as we are avid users and evangelists of their Basecamp project collaboration tool we might just see if we can speed up our own software development using some of these tricks.