Awhile ago I did a piece called ‘Web 3.0 in Production‘ which primarily discussed Phil Wainwright’s idea of Web 3.0 as additional layer on top of existing web services. Although I do not like the versioning the idea behind what Phil explained was very good. Obviously it is not a new idea but its basically building services upon services.
Basically the idea is using an API and aggregation to create new applications or interfaces built on top of existing web services. While surfing last week looking into this further I stumbled across Project Detail. Project Detail has built a business on top of 37Signal’s very popular Basecamp product. They have the mentality of, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” This is an excellent idea because 37S is a small shop and are building Basecamp to do one thing and one thing well. ProjectDetail is just extending this application to do specific functionality that provides to a specific audience.
After perusing their site and blog I decided to contact them as I was interested in their company and ideas. Chris Busse from ProjectDetail got back to me and so I put together an interview so we could get to know them better. He also showed me the demo of their support ticket add-on for Basecamp. Check it out here.
Screenshot:
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Q&A
1. How did you start your company & what was the initial idea that led
to where you are today?
I needed a time tracking tool for my consulting practice, so in late 2004
I started working on creating an online project management system with a
strong focus on time tracking. At the time I had looked at Basecamp but
it didn’t have a time tracking feature and I saw that as being what put
the “professional” in professional project management system, especially
for small teams looking to minimize the number of tools they rely on.
I work with a group of a half-dozen consultants specializing in CRM
systems for membership associations and we were finding that a lot of time
was slipping through the cracks that should have been getting billed to
clients — especially when it came to ad-hoc support issues that came up
throughout the day. I was creating a tool for us to use internally and
make available to others as a product.
Things got pretty crazy with another business venture and I had to put it
on the back burner after it was about 75% complete in spring of 2005.
When I had the chance to pick back up on it, Basecamp had the time
tracking feature that I needed originally so my enthusiasm for my own
system was somewhat diminished. The look on my business partner’s face
when I told him we were going to use Basecamp instead of what I’d been
talking about non-stop a few months before was priceless.
2. Was the company solely started to integrate with Basecamp?
Ironically, Project Detail Systems started out to compete with Basecamp.
Now that the API is available, Project Detail is focusing solely on
Basecamp add-on development. There are still a number of ideas from the
design of my original system that we’re going to be bringing out in the
form of add-ons for Basecamp.
3. How stoked were you when 37S announce the API?
Extremely. When I saw the first teaser and Ruby on Rails example in their
blog several months ago I was excited but a bit apprehensive and bought a
RoR book, figuring I’d need to know that to work with the API. I consider
myself to be pretty much “platform agnostic” – to the user, it shouldn’t
matter what language a hosted web application is written in as long as the
presentation is correct and it works. When it came out as XML over HTTP I
was ecstatic though because I could reuse 10 years worth of VB and ASP
code.
That being said, I still plan to learn RoR and may consider transitioning
to that platform, but I’ve always been wary of anything that does
automatic code generation.
4. How soon did you begin work in preparation for its release?
I guess you could say that I had mentally prepared long before its
release, having immersed myself in the issues involved in developing
hosted project management software. I was also lucky to already have a
database and web server ready to go in a hosting facility, and the company
already formed beforehand.
The API was announced on March 25th, and I posted the first public demo of
the Support Tickets Add-on we’re working on to the Basecamp forum on April
6th.
5. What’s your company structure – ie: number of developers/designers/ etc
Project Detail Systems is a company that I own, but I work with a pretty
tight group of other consultants that I mentioned before and am a partner
in two of their companies. So basically that makes this “my baby” but I’m
getting a lot of support from them. Right now this is mostly in the form
of business and process analysis and turning our clients into testers but
later it will lead to more full-time involvement.
Once the cash flow picks up the first think I’d like to do is bring a real
designer into the picture. My patience with hand-coding CSS only goes so
far.
[click to continue…]
