Collaborative Project Management for Small-Scale Freelancers

May 14, 2013 2:05 PM

I'm having trouble finding up-to-date resources for managing tasks. I freelance and handle about 3 clients that want to push through dozens of small tasks and projects each week. Is there anything with the functionality of basecamp but on a much smaller scale? A well-designed template for a collaborative task list via google documents would work too.

I am having an organizational crisis and sorting through the ask.me archives is turning up some out of date information (as anything relating to tech might) Is there a web-based solution to organizing my tasks, allowing a client to add tasks to a list, sorting the tasks, prioritizing the tasks, closing out the tasks? I would be willing to pay for a service though it seems that something like basecamp is too advanced for me (think 20 small daily items to sort in a priority order as opposed to 5 large scale tasks to dwell over). Is there a well-designed google spreadsheet or app that i should be using? How do you automate the organization your small freelance tasks?

posted by c to Technology (8 answers total)

Have you looked at Trello? It's quite different from typical project management tools. It uses a system of columns and movable index cards. Columns can have any titles you want. You could indicate prioritization by how close a card is to the top of a column.
posted by Dansaman at 2:33 PM on May 14, 2013 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Asana is pretty good for these sort of tasks, plus a lot more if you ultimately need it.
posted by skye.dancer at 2:38 PM on May 14, 2013 [2 favorites]

Insightly may work for your needs. I can't really recommend it yet, as I've only just signed up this week and barely started to explore, but it has gotten good reviews. For your size of operation you may even be able to use it for free.
posted by Kabanos at 2:40 PM on May 14, 2013

I've heard of people doing this sort of thing using open-source bug-tracking software like Trac, though I've never used it myself. We're a Basecamp shop, alas.
posted by limeonaire at 2:54 PM on May 14, 2013

Trello is great for this.
posted by bitdamaged at 2:57 PM on May 14, 2013

Best answer: I second Asana. I've used Basecamp and find it a giant pain in the butt to work with. I find Asana to be much cleaner and well organized. I use it in conjunction with shared folders on Dropbox. You can link to dropbox files from Asana. I've been using it for myself / personal projects and with a team of 4 people (in a separate workspace).

you can have up to 30 people for free I believe. I do wish it tied to Harvest however....
posted by Wink Ricketts at 2:59 PM on May 14, 2013

Just wanted to offer an alternative opinion: I've used BaseCamp quite a lot and frankly I believe it's quite a bit more simple than Asana. If you want something simple, I don't think there are many choices more simple than BaseCamp except Trello.
posted by Dansaman at 3:27 PM on May 14, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks all. I am playing around with Asana now. Its a lot more powerful than trying to write in the frustrating google doc fields on a spreadsheet.
posted by c at 4:17 PM on May 14, 2013