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By now, we have all heard that Asana is a task and project management tool. But what does that mean for you and your business?
You probably know that it's "a great way to manage teams and projects" but what is Asana and how does it work?
In many ways, Asana replaces the slew of emails, spreadsheets and sticky notes involved with each project with a far more all-encompassing solution with everything you need in the one place. It is flexible and easy to work with, making it suitable for all types of users.
So let's dive into Asana's features to appreciate its full functionality.
The main advantage of Asana is the ability to create a comprehensive list of tasks, share details on actions that are required and set deadlines for each stage of a project. Asana allows all team members to have goals and tasks assigned to them, directing everyone towards the business's goals and mission. Managing a project in this manner enables potential risks and bottlenecks to be spotted early on and ensures the process flows as effectively as possible.
One of the most useful features in Asana is the ability to split project boards into a list of tasks that need to be completed by a different person. These lists and tasks help everybody keep track of what they need to do. Each board could also show a list of tasks for each day, week or month.
You can assign tasks to specific team members within the same project board. You can set the priority score as low, medium or high so that everybody is clear on what needs doing first. Finally, each task has a progress score to see how each task is progressing and you can change the priority to urgent if it's behind schedule.
Another key Asana feature is the ability to create teams. For each team, you can group specific people to a team they work for, e.g. sales, marketing, operations, etc. Working in this way is very efficient, and when you create a new project, you can assign it to a whole team, which is far quicker than adding each employee individually. Teams will update dynamically, should they change personnel in the future.
The benefit of using teams allows each member of staff to view the work they need to. When you assign projects to teams, you can also prevent staff members from viewing sensitive data. It's therefore good to use the teams feature as a method of delegating access.
The calendar view allows you to view the tasks that need completing within a given timeframe. This view is similar to what we can expect from Outlook and Apple Mail.
With the calendar view, you can see any potential overlaps or conflicts in the schedule. With the easy to use drag and scale interface, we can reorder tasks and change the duration quickly and efficiently to ensure your project remains on schedule.
When working on a project with multiple documents, emails and staff meetings, it can be challenging to assess how the project progresses. The Progress tab in Asana shows how the project is getting on. Here, you can see useful information such as status updates from key stakeholders, a burnup chart to visualise progress and other important data such as start and end date.
The status update is an excellent way of keeping everybody involved in a project with the latest events. A status update can be assigned a green, orange, or red colour to indicate if the project is on track, at-risk or off-track. The "@" mentioning feature allows you to involve specific team members if a task requires their assistance.
Overall, Asana is an excellent project and task management tool that can help bring order to chaos. By consolidating all the necessary information into one place, you can stop doing work about work and focus on the tasks that matter. By using Asana, you can stay on task and never miss a deadline again.