I introduced Basecamp to our website update project group. Success was limited due to no participation from our IT department (marketing & management were on board and active).

IT had built their own project management system that was bloated, confusing and overly complicated. IT admitted to its poor usability and in looking at other projects within the system (how I even wound up in another project was yet another problem with their system), it was not being used much by their own department because of its failings.

A system is only as good as the participants who are willing to use it. The basic communication component was certainly evident and baffles me to this day how that IT group manages to get things done. Thinking back on it now, they were big IM users. A Twitter-like interface with OmniFocus-like shortcuts for categorizing would have been ideal.