Scott Magdalein is part of the team responsible for YouVersion. Below he tells us how Highrise and Basecamp has helped the site reach the 4 million user mark.
YouVersion is an online and mobile Bible tool for sharing your Bible reading experience with friends. A "social Bible" if you will. We reached the 4 million user mark in January with only 3 developers, one designer, and a project manager (while still maintaining several other properties).
We reached that mark with the help of a small army of skilled volunteers that help us with development, design, data management, and other tasks. And, to organize and deploy the currently 75+ volunteers, we use Basecamp and Highrise in a specific way.
First, each volunteer signs up to help using a Wufoo form that notifies me and dumps their data into Highrise. Then I go into Highrise and organize them into groups using tags based on their skills, amount of time they have available to help on a regular basis, and in what part of the app(s) that they'd prefer to help (although they don't always get to help exactly where they want if there are needs elsewhere).
Then, once they've been verified as a solid volunteer, both on reliability and by taking a small test to determine their skill level, I employ them into small projects in groups of 3-5 people working on either specific features or in ongoing efforts like support or code/design audits. Each of these smaller projects is handled as a dedicated project in Basecamp.
So, you can probably imagine that Basecamp is a lifesaver. First, it's easy enough to use that I don't have to train each new volunteer. I just post my standard introduction message and they're able to figure out the rest. Second, Basecamp makes it easy to manage LOTS of people working on LOTS of projects. Third, Highrise makes it easy to organize everyone in a way that makes sense with my system. Finally, Basecamp and Highrise together gives our internal dev team the ability to lead the volunteers without having to be "the boss".
