Asana - a great agency PM tool
May 29, 2018
Asana - a great agency PM tool
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Asana
I work at a mid-sized digital agency that has used Asana for several years. When we first adopted Asana, I was the technical project manager. As the technical PM I was responsible for managing 20+ website projects at once as well as support tickets from previous clients. Asana was a great way to assign accountability to specific team members and assign due dates to keep projects moving forward. Before Asana, we handled everything through email. It was a nightmare trying to keep track of the status of each project and the relationships between tasks. For me, more than anything, Asana is great for assigning "ownership," which is key to actually getting things done. Though I am no longer a PM, I still use Asana daily to assign responsibilities to my team and keep track of project calendars.
- Fast: Unlike other PM platforms I've used, Asana is very fast. In fact, it's so fast that when you leave a comment on a task, anyone else looking at that task at the same time will actually see updates as you type. You can easily move tasks into different projects by dragging and dropping. There is no lag time between opening new projects and tasks. Everything seems to load instantaneously.
- Intuitive: Asana doesn't have a steep learning curve. The default view is list-based. Your team will have no problem learning how to add new tasks, use the WYSIWYG editor, or assign tasks. Use familiar commands like "@" to tag a follower on a task.
- Keyboard shortcuts: The keyboard shortcuts are incredibly helpful. Simply press enter to enter a new task, tab+backspace to delete, use familiar copy/paste and undo commands, and much more. PMs with a lot to juggle will appreciate the shortcuts.
- My Tasks: The "my tasks" view provides a single, centralized location for you to see everything on your plate. Use section headings and drag and drop tasks to re-order. I use this to prioritize my week. It helps me focus on what's really important.
- Searchability: The search in Asana is intuitive. Our task backlog dates back three years, and I can still almost always find what I'm looking for via a simple keyword search. Projects are archived, not deleted, so I always feel like my historical information is safe.
- Flexibility: Projects can be set up as a waterfall/list view or as kanban. This product should work well for teams with different styles.
- Integrations: Asana integrates with everything. There's a great Slack integration, but my favorite is the Instagantt integration. Using Instagantt in tandem with asana is a super easy way to create attractive digital project calendars.
- Emails: Asana can lead to inbox-overload. By default, you are subscribed to updates on any task that you create or follow. Updates include someone marking a task complete, leaving a comment on a task, or adding a file to a task. This means that if your coworker adds a file, makes a comment, then assigns the task back to you, then marks the task complete, you're looking at 4 emails in 10 seconds. You can always unsubscribe from emails or write rules to categorize them in your inbox, but the default setting will leave you inundated.
- Assigning responsibility to multiple team members: It is possible to assign a task to multiple members of your team, but I don't like the way asana handles this. Rather than assigning the one task to multiple people, asana creates DUPLICATES of the original task. This can be frustrating because it creates redundancy.
- Dependencies: Assigning dependencies is a new feature for asana. While it's great that this is now possible, it's pretty clear that it's not a focus for the software. The dependencies don't show up clearly in the list view, though they are obvious within the task view.
- Overwhelming: This is probably more of a governance issue for my team specifically, but our Asana has gotten overwhelming. I count the flexibility of Asana as a pro, but it does come with risk. The lack of rules and controls leads to a "wild west" situation where anyone can organize tasks, projects, templates, etc. anyway they want. We have some team members organizing all their tasks by team function, others organizing tasks by project, others using entirely separate Asana workspaces, etc.
- I think Asana has had a positive ROI for our business because it allows us to complete projects on time. Without a project management system, I think it's really easy for tasks to fall through the cracks, which leads to project delays and unhappy clients.
- Because Asana integrates with Instagantt, it prevents us from needing to buy separate tools. We were paying $10 per month for SmartSheets to deliver client calendars, but we were able to eliminate this expense by using the Instagantt integration.
- Collaboration is key to projects. Prior to Asana, most of our collaboration happened over email, where it was easy to lose track of action items. asana helps us organize collaboration around specific tasks, giving the team more actionable next steps.
Asana is a great balance of simplicity and robustness. JIRA is simply too robust for my team's needs - it is more appropriate for a software team. We did not need the capabilities to customize automated workflows. Our development process is waterfall, so a PM software centered on "lists" (like Asana) is the best fit for us. Podio was too flexible and time-consuming to configure. Wrike is extremely similar to Asana. Trello and Wunderlist were a little too basic for our needs.