I understand the proper management structural concept of “no orphan work.” If it can’t be billed, accounted, then why do it? But, that’s not how any company operates. What happens is people do the work, don’t document it and therefor the work is never documented, never accounted and therefor never billed. If I get an email, phone call or urgent IM to do something I immediately do it. The person picks that mode of request because there’s no “URGENT” button, and because they don’t want to deal with the hassle of creating the project, milestone, etc. for the work when it takes a quantum of less time just to ask someone to do it, or handle it themselves.

Why document everything? Billing, accounting and control over your organization. If a manager can’t see where people spend their time, it’s impossible to assess who works and who doesn’t. Someone can work less and bill more simply because they have the authority and means to avoid undocumented work. This weakens oversight that can be done much more efficiently with a good project management suite.

Orphans can be easily created in Basecamp as is by creating a project and milestone specifically for that cause. However, the ease of checking them off, reconciling them to existing or new projects, milestones and todo lists is quite painful in the present UI. This is a process that demands a simpler UI flow.