In a post-Covid world, there have never been more options for flexible and hybrid office working models. Many businesses went completely remote, canceling costly real estate leases, and others adopted a more flexible and hybrid working model.
With this new-found flexibility has come an explosion of online project management tools to help remote teams work more cohesively regardless of their working structure.
Asana is no newcomer to the online project management space. It was launched in 2008 and has over 140,000 thousand paid subscribers; the business is valued at over 4 billion dollars, which is astounding. Basecamp was established in 2004 and rebranded in 2014. It has over 250,000 paid subscribers.
To make an educated decision about which tool is a better fit for your team’s needs, it is essential to evaluate the strengths of each project management tool.
What Are the Top Features of Basecamp?
Project Pages
Within Basecamp, each project entered into the software tool is designated its own page. Within that page, colleagues can collaborate, share documents and files, chat, and work on documents in real time. This segmented approach keeps all projects separate and visually separate so as not to confuse people with similarly-named projects – or projects that encompass a second phase or second step.
The chat feature is also handy to have broken out, away from the main chat discourse. This ensures that any essential project conversations are captured within the project rather than within someone’s main chat window, which is not public or accessible by the rest of the project team.
To-Do List
Most organized project managers probably have a litany of lists decorating their workspace, whether virtual or literal! Every well-organized person knows that the crux of organization is in the compilation of a detailed to-do list.
Basecamp has integrated this feature into its basic set-up of the project management tool. However, unlike a traditional to-do list, Basecamp’s management version allows users to assign actions to other people and will enable people to chat, edit, and notate the list with their own.
Similarly, to-do lists can be assigned deliverable dates so it is easy to keep up with project-wide deadlines for the project management and operations team.
Message Boards
As outlined earlier, Basecamp allows teams to collaborate and chat within a specific project message board. This is very helpful for other team members to scroll through the chat for relevant information.
This is helpful for teams working across multiple time zones or on separate schedules. Although message boards shouldn’t be used for essential information, it is an excellent way to collate additional information available for the team.
Scheduling
Arguably, scheduling and collaboration are some of the most vital aspects of a project management tool – and within project management itself.
Basecamp features excellent scheduling capabilities and allows users to designate deliverables to team members, assign alternative deliverable dates, and mark significant milestones and events.
The layout of the scheduling feature is helpful for all key stakeholders to have a visual guide to when items are due, who they are assigned to, and where they are in the completion process.
File Sharing
Basecamp helpfully allows users to exchange and upload files. Although a seemingly simplistic element of the project management software, this feature is essential for remote, global, or hybrid office-based teams.
Cloud-based document sharing is an imperative tool to allow work to flow freely and simply between team members. Basecamp keeps this simple for users.
Chat Feature
Collaborative chat features within project management software are important for Basecamp users to shoot one another quick messages, which might be faster than sending an email or picking up the phone.
Quite often, employees prefer the sound of a message ping rather than seeing their phone ring, which could be a timely distraction.
Real-time communication between workers is essential, and the chat feature within Basecamp is an important and helpful feature.
Campfire
Basecamp also has another interesting chat feature, a more informal chat feature, Campfire. Campfire is a casual, quick, real-time feature that allows workers to check in on items quickly.
Although there is a chat feature and a specific project chat – this feature also provides value in allowing employees to chat, joke, and check-in. This feature is beneficial for remote teams who do not often get the chance to chat with their co-workers.
Check-ins
This handy feature is great for teams looking for a quick update on their pending projects. This helps ensure that projects remain on track without joining distracting and lengthy project calls.
Client Access
An exciting feature of Basecamp allows some clients to have a limited view of a summary and snapshot of their respective projects.
If executed correctly, this could be an excellent feature, allowing all stakeholders a bird’s eye view of their project. This feature should be carefully managed to ensure that all updates are vetted before the client has access to them.
Reporting
Basecamp can produce reports based on project completion percentages and statuses. This is helpful for PMs providing an overview of their projects. This feature also benefits managers trying to get a status across multiple projects.
Mobile App
Although an expected and somewhat simple feature, having a robust and functional mobile application is vital to ensure that employees can make updates while traveling or in the field.
What Are the Top Features of Asana?
Task Management
Asana’s robust task management features let users track and organize project tasks efficiently. Users can also assign project tasks to other team members, set due dates, and prioritize the delivery dates of items.
This is obviously one of the key features of project management software, as it is the software’s core purpose.
Project Planning
Another key feature, alongside task management, is project planning. The Asana software has excellent project management capabilities for creating and managing projects.
Asana users can create project timelines, set milestones, and create a visual representation of project progress.
As already discussed, having a visual representation of project milestones is very helpful for fully remote collaborative teams.
Team Collaboration
Team collaboration within remote, hybrid, and global companies is essential. Asana fosters a collaboration community by allowing users to comment on common tasks, upload and share files, and for employees to chat within the software.
All of these features can be carried out in real-time, further fostering helpful team collaboration.
Calendar View Dashboard
One of the great features of Asana is the calendar-view capability. This enables users, should they wish, to view all of their complex projects and deliverables placed against a calendared backdrop.
This feature is super-helpful for users who enjoy this visual approach to organization. It ensures that critical stakeholders are consistently aware of impending deadlines and any roadblocks that might require some intervention.
Integration with Other Tools and Apps
An essential feature for all types of workplace software is its ability to seamlessly sync and integrate with other popular tools, apps, and software.
Asana integrates with many other tools like Google, Slack, and Dropbox. Although this is convenient for users, it also serves a greater purpose and ensures that information is centralized and workflow is disrupted as little as possible.
Similarly, Asana has an excellent mobile application that works well across Apple and Android devices. This feature is essential for remote workers who need to check data when traveling and upload and update when traveling. If all data uploads are left until employees make it back to their desktops, this allows for the opportunity to forget to update information.
Custom Tailoring
For both large corporations and smaller businesses, the ability to custom-fit software to suit your internal processes and procedures is essential.
With Asana, consumers can completely customize the tool to their preferences. Customization options include custom fields, project templates, and manipulatable task dependencies are just some of the options available.
Project Progress Tracking
Again, another imperative feature of any project management software tool is the ability for users to visualize the progress of the projects they are responsible for.
Key information can be exported from Asana and put into graph format or charted. This is always very helpful for a holistic view of many complex projects – or as a summary of one with many deliverables.
Through this visual approach, users can identify any potential roadblocks or bottlenecks and make informed data-driven decisions to ensure adequate progress.
Workspace and Organizations
Asana allows users to create and custom-tailor their own workspaces for different teams, projects, or departments.
This is very helpful for one-off projects or teams who often collaborate on one project. Users can organize and structure the layout and projects within the created workspaces in a hierarchical deliverable fashion.
Reporting and Analytics
Both reporting and analytics are essential functionalities of good project management software. The generation and export of real data ensures that project decisions can be rooted in good information derived from existing data.
Team performance and project metrics can be tracked via active reporting, and this data can be displayed in any preferred format. Reports can include staff workloads, project completion rates, and allocated hours spent on projects.
FAQs
What is the pricing difference between Asana and Basecamp?
Basecamp only offers two models to keep it simple. The first plan is meant for smaller businesses, start-ups, and freelancers. This plan runs at $15.00 per user per month. The extended model is for $299 per month, but this plan includes as many users as you wish to add. Both models have all possible features, with nothing being gatekept for the higher-paid plan.
What is an interesting feature of each software plan?
Basecamp features a very unusual quirk within their tool, which allows the client to have a summary page view of a project that belongs to them. Not many software feature this ability, and it could be helpful. Alternatively, this feature can not be utilized for a more traditional approach.
On the other hand, Asana is set apart from other tools by the sheer amount of customization available for users. This feature is perfect for businesses with a more complex workflow or requiring additional redundancies to be built in to protect quality.
