The Basecamp Way

The 37signals team created Basecamp over 20 years ago from our own need to organize our projects. Since then, people have been curious about how we approach running our own company with one of our own products — we're happy to share!

This guide will walk you through our setup, the tools we favor, and how you can set things up for your established teams, your recruiting efforts, and onboarding new employees.

Kimberly, Chase, and Ashley from the 37signals team go over all of this in a recorded Office Hours session below. No time to watch the recording? Read on to see what was discussed!

Projects

Projects are the very heart of Basecamp! We tend to have three main types of projects:

• Company-wide
• Ongoing projects
• Temporary projects

Everyone has access to the company-wide projects, ongoing projects might be more limited in access but they don’t have a start or end date like our temporary projects do.

Using Tools

Projects are naturally versatile — you can adjust what tools you use within each project. Here's an overview of how we use the project tools:

The 37signals HQ

Our headquarters is a project that we use as a central gathering location for company-wide information — perfect for us as a fully remote company. This is where employees can find announcements, files we need to refer back to, and one of our favorites: the Chat tool we renamed to Campfire. It's a lot of casual, water cooler conversation. Boosts are little notes or emojis you can leave underneath someone's post and they add a ton of flavor to the chat.

The HQ is more about general communication and resources, so tools like To-Dos or Card Table won't be used in this project. What does get a ton of use is the Automatic Check-In tool. We've set up a recurring question that asks everyone in the company "What did you do this weekend?" It's a rich way for us to learn about each other's adventures. 🥇🏝🥾📸

The What Works project

Another company-wide project that gets a ton of use is one called "What Works." We make a new one each year and it holds our individual updates as well as team-specific updates.

The What Works project has two Message Board tools. They've been renamed to Kickoffs and Heartbeats and that's where team-specific updates live.

Kickoffs are posted at the start of a six-week cycle of work and Heartbeats are posted the week after that cycle wraps up. All teams will write these updates each cycle but that doesn't necessarily mean that all the work fits neatly into a six-week timeframe. The Support team, for example, has work that's always ongoing so we make sure to include it every time

Heartbeats describe how everything went. It's like an automatic check-in but for an entire team! Taking an asynchronous approach helps everyone digest the information when they can. And leave celebratory boosts. 🙌

Automatic Check-Ins

Automatic Check-In questions are an important tool in this project. They provide a pulse of the company happenings — easily.

We use Automatic Check-In questions to keep track of the work we're all doing. We ask "What will you be working on this week?" once a week and we ask "What have you worked on?" every day.

As a fully remote company spread out across the globe, we put a strong emphasis on asynchronous communication. These required questions are answered by every employee on a regular basis — it's actually part of our company policy to continually answer these questions.

Answers will be anything from quick bullet points to long-form prose, all with the intention of radiating information out to the rest of the company. Important bonus: this eliminates the need for a regular huddle or standup meeting!

You might be wondering how to get everyone to answering and participate sincerely. Here's how we do it:

1. When we formalized the Automatic Check-In policy, examples were given of how answers should look. They've got some detail, they link out to other parts of the Basecamp account, they capture more than just "I finished ABC."
2. Everyone is responsible for answering check-ins regularly, including our executives.
3. We set the expectation that it's a part of your weekly work, not something extra. Don't think of them as an afterthought but as part of your daily schedule. 
4. We reminded everyone that they're leaving valuable history for the future. Search for something in Basecamp and you'll see answers from two years ago that helps you out today. 🎁

Here's an example of what a quality check-in looks like at 37signals:

Cycle Projects

Our cycle projects are created from a template and they're structured by the limitation of time. The appetite for some cycle projects can take all six weeks, while others might be just one or two weeks long.

When you click into a cycle project, we want everything to be in this one place. And with the right combination of tools, it's entirely possible!

Cycle projects are ones that have a start and an end date which makes them perfect for the Lineup. Clicking on "Lineup" at the top of a Basecamp account will show you a bird's eye view of all the projects in flight. It's one of the best ways to get to work that's happening now.

We also use markers on the Lineup to indicate when a cycle starts and when it ends. They help us visualize how projects line up against one another with those important dates in mind.

You'll also notice that each project has just a few people on it. They're the ones that are "on the project" and anyone else with access to the project is listed as "just following." This helps to clear up the visual clutter while maintaining access.

Tools in a Cycle Project

We use a specific set of tools that we've found bring us the most clarity and success.

Let's take a closer look at each one:

• The Message Board is where the Head of Product, Brian, will post a kickoff message for the new feature. He'll refer to any history, outline directives, set expectations, etc. During the cycle, any major questions that the team has will be posted in the Message Board, notifying whoever needs to be brought into the discussion.
• Chat, in contrast, is ideal for quick questions, brief discussions, and everyday conversation.
• To-Do lists lay the work out for the duo assigned to a cycle project. All to-dos on their lists aren't created equally. And, when the To-Do lists are tracked on a Hill Chart, we can truly see if our lists are falling on the left side of the hill where we're figuring things out, or the right side of the hill where we're making it happen.
• Hill Charts are very important in understanding where the work is. It's intentionally manual! There's no AI involved, no bot, no "how many to-dos did you check off" — because none of that tells the full story. These are thoughtful updates written by the people doing the work!
• Doors are always used in our cycle projects to link out to something, somewhere else on the internet. We tend to link to the code changes (the pull request) in GitHub and we set up a Door to the beta environment where we're testing out how a new feature works with the rest of Basecamp.
• Card Table is ideal for our Quality Assurance team. They step in near the end of the project and in their testing, they file questions and bugs as cards on the table. They move from Triage to In Progress, to QA to Confirm Fix, before they're moved to Done.

To-Dos vs. Card Table

We're often asked when it's best to use a Card Table versus the To-Do tool.

You can use any combination you want when it comes to these tools. Truly! We tend to look at To-Dos as work that's either done or not done. If the work goes through stages, or feels like it has a progression to follow, try Card Table.

In this video about Card Tables, Kimberly shows examples of when you might want to use a To-Do list versus a Card Table. Here's a closer look at the OnCall example that's in both videos:

Move the Needle

All projects have the option to enable a Needle. This is fantastic high-level view of any project. The Needle lives at the top of your project page and it serves as the highest-level status update for the project by simply answering, "Is this project on track?" and telling you how far along things are on this project.

Some of the team at 37signals have work that doesn't start until a feature goes live. 🚀 The Needle is perfect for them! They can quickly and easily see how the project is going without following every conversation in the project. (Unless they want to!) So, for example, when Jeff and Andy are almost done, Kimberly can start drafting video scripts and written announcements.

Mission Control

What if you want to see the Needle but for multiple projects? You certainly can! Clicking on Activity and then on Mission Control will bring you to a page where you'll see all the Needles for all the projects you're a part of.

And! If you've set up Stacks on your Home page, you can click on a Stack and see the Needles for the projects in that Stack.

Learn about this and all the other big picture views we have in Basecamp in another delightful Kimberly video.

Project Templates & Onboarding Employees

We find ourselves creating a lot of similar projects and that's where project templates come in. Our most-used project templates are for cycle projects and for onboarding new 37signals employees.

When we hire a new Support team member, we break things down into digestible pieces: what needs to get done before someone's start date and what the new hire needs to get done once they've joined. The lists are a-plenty so we also take it a step further by grouping similar tasks together and assigning them out whenever possible. This is a huge, huge help in making sure we don't miss anything when the tasks are many and the process is recurring.

If you're curious about how we handle onboarding, check out the Office Hours session with our People Operations team here.

To-Do List Templates

Of course, you may not need every tool that a project template offers. Enter To-Do list templates!

Just like project templates, the goal here is to save time when we have repeatable work. Kimberly and Ashley have a project dedicated to live Office Hours sessions. Within that project, they use a to-do list template to keep track of all the tasks that need to be checked off before and after a live session.

You could use separate projects for this, it's not wrong — go with what feels natural to you and your team!

Ask us anything!

We hope that this look into how we work can inspire and help. All companies work differently so if you wanted to talk to us about any specifics, don't hesitate!

If you're curious about anything else we have to say:

• Sign up for our newsletter
• Listen to The Rework Podcast (with Kimberly as the host!)
• Check out our books (including Shape Up!)

And if you're interested in more than just Basecamp, we have a fresh approach to email and calendars in our HEY app. Looking for a chat tool that you pay for ONCE? We built a super simple group chat called Campfire.