What Happened at Corvus CRO This Week
Automating Basecamp Project Management Tasks
Basecamp is a fantastic project mangement platform with an unbeatable price point at only $100 a month. We use it to collaborate with several of our clients. Both versions of Basecamp (2 and 3) are really good at handling team communication; it handles messages, notifications, scheduling, to-do lists, document sharing, and most of the other important features of a project management tool.
That being said, Basecamp has a little bit of trouble looking at the “big picture” if you have lots of active projects. Something that’s easily possible with an optimization program, especially if you set up a separate project for experiment like we do. Our solution for broader program visibility is a Kanban board:
Experiment progress is tracked through these activity stages:
- Idea – New experiments submitted through a hypothesis builder form
- Plan – Experiments prioritized through a P.I.E.E. ranking
- Build – Experiments being built in the testing platform
- QC – Experiments ready for proofing and final approval
- Active – Live experiments
- Complete – Finished experiments
Every experiment gets it’s own card on the Kanban board. Progressing a card through the Kanban stacks forms the core of our automation triggers. For example, when an card is moved to Complete, a Google Analytics report automatically runs to grab user counts, transaction counts, and revenue for the matching time period. That GA data is used to perform comparative analysis and experiment lifetime value estimation.
The newest addition to the Corvus CRO automation arsenal is Basecamp project creation and management. Every time a card is moved to the Plan stack, a new Basecamp project is created from a template; the template sets up the necessary to-do lists and discussion channels for experiment collaboration. Progression into other stacks adds additional to-dos, checks off tasks, uploads files, and/or sends notifications as necessary. The automation handles building the project management framework, eliminating a significant chunk of configuration tedium, and freeing up people to work on more interesting things.
Organization is key to any successful conversion optimization program. Trapped in configuration hell? Project management software causing more headaches than progress? Can’t get a handle on your split testing process? Corvus CRO can help. Schedule a free 30 minute consultation with us today.