I have been reading "Getting Real," book by 37signals, the creators of basecamp. BaseCamp is great and the book is great.

First, it takes you right in on the thought behind basecamp as a product tool project management. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we moved from sometimes users of BaseCamp to making it the core of our project engagement communication system this fall, aided and abetted by participating in idealware.org’s review of project management.

Reading the book, I see that the focus 37Signals brought to this project neatly corresponds to the primary need we had to address --the emphasis on two-way communication with the client.

“We realized project management isn't about charts, graphs, reports and statistics — it's about communication. It also isn't about a project manager sitting up high and broadcasting a project plan. It's about everyone taking responsibility together to make the project work.”

“We wanted to democratize project management — make it something everyone was a part of (including the client). Projects turn out better when everyone takes collective ownership of the process.”

Creating space and means for our clients to collaborate more closely in guiding our projects to conclusion seems critical to kinds projects small and medium nonprofits and businesses need. Most of the time, we work with folks who do not have deep technical experience managing their side of a web or database project and yet the project’s success depends on their contribution to the team. Using BaseCamp, which is easy, transparent, and dare I say, fun, has really caught on with a number of our clients already.

As you get deeper in, “Getting Real” mostly talks about the company’s approach to software and product development. I will write more about that separately. Right now, I will just say that the 37Signals folks provide a practical example of what it means to use new Open Source and Web 2.0 friendly tools (Ruby on Rails, which came out of the Basecamp development process) for agile development, small teams, careful scoping of work, positive motivated developers, and great web and user interface design. It’s great reading it both as Basecamp user and as software developer today.

As a placeholder for more to come, here’s just one thought that expresses what motivates them as developers:

“The less your app is a chore to build, the better it will be. Keep it small and manageable so you can actually enjoy the process.”