Asana is a task management platform that started as an internal tool at Facebook. It has since expanded to include more features and integrations. Asana’s community-first model lets company members find solutions together, making it beneficial for businesses to work on projects with others in their niche. Trello is a project management tool that allows users to organize their tasks, assign them to team members, and collaborate on projects. Asana is another project management tool that focuses on collaboration. Asana is a project management solution for teams that aims to make work easier.
As with the finest project management software I evaluated, Asana can be tailored to the size of your team and the scope of your projects. You may use it to construct a workflow that fits your team’s demands and how you operate. Unfortunately, Asana has numerous flaws that project managers may find objectionable. For example, AAsana’slearning curve might be intimidating for new teams to project management software. Furthermore, with current collaboration technologies, several persons’ inability to give tasks is obsolete. As a result of these factors, Asana did not make my top ten list. However, that isn’t saying it isn’t a helpful tool. I’ve used Asana before, and it has a lot of benefits, such as simple automation and safe data backups. Asana also has a lot of tools, integrations, and templates to help you and your team move ahead with your projects so that they could be a good fit for you. In this review, I go through the features, benefits, and drawbacks of Asana to help you determine whether it meets your needs for project management software.
Pros and Cons of Asana
Pros
- Automating recurring tasks
- Several integrations are available.
- Backups of data
- There is a free plan available.
- Workflow that can be customized
- Templates that are simple to utilize
Cons
- It has the potential to become cluttered.
- A limited number of complimentary copies are available.
- Each job has just one assignee.
- For newcomers, it might be perplexing.
- For teams, it is too expensive.
How Does Asana Measure Up to the Best Project Management Software?
Asana has a lot of positive feedback on the internet, and many prominent people utilize it. Google, Zappos, PayPal, and Blue Apron are just a few companies that use Asana to manage their staff. IIt’snot hard to understand why. One of the AAsana’sfinest advantages is its contemporary workflow design. You may also establish objectives, measure progress, build project Portfolios, and designate Workspaces for your team. In other words, Asana allows you to personalize almost every element of your team, project, and task. However, despite all of AAsana’sfeatures, it is missing a few key ones. Instead of being an out-of-the-box project management solution, Asana needs specific app connections to deliver numerous capabilities, such as time-tracking and real-time communication with your team. In addition, although Asana provides a free version, most teams will need to subscribe to a subscription plan to get the most out of the platform. If you’re looking for a free tool, I suggest Trello, an unlimited user subscription. If you need something a bit more substantial, go to Zoho Tasks, which can handle even the most complex projects.
The versatility of the Asana Project
The ideal project management software for your team is determined by the kind of tasks you do. Budgets, schedules, and thorough reporting, for example, are simple tasks that don’t need the bells and whistles that other software alternatives give. Asana specializes in these kinds of projects. Asana provides a high-level overview of projects rather than a thorough analysis of complex projects with many moving pieces. Asana is more of a supervisory and collaborating tool than a full-fledged project management tool in this regard. However, it can still manage various projects and activities, including templates. I’ll get to it later. Operations, sales, marketing, and product teams use Asana for editorial planning, bug tracking, business planning, web production, and other projects because it allows groups to interact in whichever manner they need.
Size of the Asana Team Flexibility
Asana enables several individuals to collaborate on projects at the same time. Up to 15 individuals may collaborate on work in the free version. You may also modify Asana with processes and displays to suit your tteam’spreferences for project management. Larger teams will need to upgrade to a subscription membership, although you may add as many people as you wish on the free plan. However, since Asana charges per user, adding users might be costly. You might spend up to $30.49 per month per user, depending on the capabilities you need.
Ease of Use of Asana
Stated, a newcomer to project management software will be confused by Asana. Although it has a clean and friendly appearance, AAsana’sUI might be difficult to grasp. AAsana’snavigation is user-friendly yet not intuitive. A sidebar containing all of the critical places you’ll need, such as your objectives, inbox, and tasks, is included with the basic package. However, things might get blurry as you go further into the parts. There’s a lot to unpack between boards, timelines, calendars, duties, and subtasks. Fortunately, AAsana’stemplates offer a training course to add to your Workspace—IIt’sreally thorough, including everything from workflow structure to team member labeling inside projects and tasks. As a novice Asana user, I strongly advise you to dive into this training.
Trello, on the other hand, is one of the most straightforward projects management systems to use, with a bit of a learning curve. As a result, it’s an excellent choice for novices and small groups who want to get up and running quickly. However, it lacks several of AAsana’smore complex capabilities.
Characteristics of the Asana
Asana comes with a slew of built-in tools to help you boost productivity, manage projects, and keep track of assignments. Asana provides a variety of methods to input and sees your workflow, including Kanban boards and Gantt charts, as well as additional tools to help you map your projects, provide feedback, and more.
For some teams, AAsana’sbasic capabilities are sufficient. However, if you need anything other than what Asana provides, you may most likely find it via integrations. Asana links with file sharing, communication, design, importing, and other technologies to expand its dashboard’s capability through its integrations.
Pricing for Asanas
Asana has four price levels, including a free plan and an enterprise rate for which you’ll need to engage with the sales staff. The free program enables 15 individuals to collaborate and limitless tasks, file storage, and communications. It may be sufficient for smaller groups to work with. Premium membership is required for teams who want timeline organization, dashboards, forms, private projects, and other advanced capabilities. A Business account is required to use Portfolios, Goals, and advanced integrations. Users may be billed annually or monthly in Asana. Premium costs $13.49 per user per month if paid monthly, or $10.99 if paid yearly. Monthly billing is $30.49 per month, while yearly billing costs $24.99 per month.
The cost is significantly increased over similar software with similar functionality, such as Zoho Projects, which costs just $10 per month per person for its most expensive subscription.
Collaboration in Asana
There’s no doubting that Asana is designed for collaboration and teamwork. Teams may communicate with one another, manage their workflow, assign tasks, and move projects through a pipeline using built-in functionality and extra connectors. Many communication functions can only be accessed via integrations, yet they are accessible.
Maybe that’s why it’s strange that the program ignores a crucial function for teams: allocating work to many people. For many people, this is AAsana’sworst fault. You must replicate the assignment for each individual if you want to assign it to numerous persons. It is not difficult to multiply a job, but it is inconvenient. Instead of managing the work from a single location, you’ll have to handle each task duplicate. The procedure prevents teams from working together as effectively as they might, and it needs a bit of extra attention from a project manager to ensure that nothing is overlooked. There are considerably better collaboration tools than Asana. For example, Zoho Projects supports many types of team collaboration as built-in capabilities, like forums and real-time chat. Teamwork also features notes, texting, and other communication channels to keep your team linked.
Templates for Asana
I like it when project management software makes it easy to set up a project. After all, that is the purpose of these programs. The templates in Asana are ideal for this. With just a few clicks, you can create a process tailored to your project, from design projects to customer success management. Of course, a template may not suit all operations and teams in its current state. However, you may always modify the template to meet your needs. The foundation is in place to get you started. The Asana Template Gallery includes a variety of templates organized by project type to help you discover precisely what you need, such as this bug tracking template:
Portfolios and Workspaces in Asana
Within Asana, you may arrange your team and its work in various ways. A Workspace, a workgroup to which you belong, is at the top of the hierarchy. Users, projects, and tasks in each Workspace are hidden from people in other Workspaces. For example, you may charge a content Workspace and a marketing Workspace if you’re a project manager. Portfolios are located inside each Workspace. Portfolios are a fancy term for your WWorkspace’sprojects. To classify your tasks, you may create various Portfolios, such as Sales, Finance, and Customer Service.
Portfolio management is only accessible in the Business plan, whereas task management is only available in the free and Premium plans.
Automated Asana
YYou’llgain the advantage of automation with premium Asana subscriptions, which will save you time while setting up and managing tasks and projects. Create Rules to route jobs to the appropriate project, allocate work to your team, and approve work before moving on to the next phase. Asana will adjust it for all subsequent steps if you need to amend a due date. Custom Rules enable you to establish project rules to keep things moving and ensure everyone is on the same page. When combined with AAsana’stemplates, you may be amazed at how much time you save by avoiding time-consuming project management activities.
Workflow Management using Asana
The tools you need to keep your team and process in check should be included in project management software. For example, your software’s workflow management customization choices, in addition to built-in tools and procedures, may enable seamless transitions across a project.
This is an area where Asana shines. From the calendar view to Kanban boards, the application offers a variety of methods to arrange projects and tasks. The most advanced capabilities, such as bespoke processes with dependence rules, are only available on the expensive plans, which is typical for this software. Forms may also assist you in juggling job requests by allowing you to collect information about incoming tasks. Both internal and external teams may fill out forms. When the data is complete, it is saved as a new task, allowing your team to work. For example, allowing a customer to request an appointment on an as-needed basis is a good idea. Allow them to fill out a form to notify the team right away.
Asana can easily manage processes for single users to huge groups. Solopreneurs may use it for to-do lists and job prioritizing or by a team for a web design project or company goal and model development.
Integrations with Asana
Connect the tools you use every day to transform Asana into a multi-functional application with all of your favorite features in one place. Asana is a bit of a skeleton on its own. However, the addition of connectors can be transformed into a complete project management and communication center for your company.
The following are just a handful of the many integrations that enhance AAsana’sfunctionality:
- Slack
- Gmail
- Zoom
- Everhour
- Jira Cloud is a cloud-based project management system.
- Vimeo
- Automate.io
- Trello
- Google Drive is a cloud-based storage service.
- Velocity
- Nave
- Aha!
- Microsoft Teams is a collaboration tool developed by Microsoft.
Connectors, such as Zapier, may be used to incorporate many tools at once. For example, with AAsana’sfree edition, you can add over 100 connectors, but you’ll need a Business subscription to use complex integrations like Salesforce and Power BI.
Backups & Security in Asana
Any organization, particularly those that keep information online, should prioritize security. A lot of information is kept in the digital environment when you utilize project management software. Asana uses SSL encryption to safeguard the data you enter. This prevents anybody outside your and your team’s accounts from viewing your information. Your data is additionally mirrored inside AAsana’sbackups using AAmazon’srelational database service to provide an extra degree of security if anything goes wrong. If a database fails and project and task information is lost, Asana can swiftly recover your data using its backups. TThere’salso a Pro Backup connection, which enables you to back up your data automatically every day. Pro Backup also allows you to recover anything you’ve accidentally deleted in Asana, which is a fantastic tool for those inevitable “oops” moments.
Compare and contrast the best project management software available. We looked at hundreds of project management software programs and selected the top ones. Asana makes project management and team communication a breeze. Hat lacks fundamental capabilities. It makes up for integrations accessible on both free and subscription accounts. Ost companies will discover an Asana setup that suits their process automation and management, team communication, and project management requirements.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better, Asana or smartsheet?
A: Asana is better than smartsheet because it allows users to be more productive.
What is the best way to organize Asana?
A: The best way to organize tasks and projects on Asana is through tags. Y adding a title, you can specify what type of task or project it is so that your team members find them and anyone else looking at the list in question.
Is Jira better than Asana?
A: JIRA is different software. It’s not better or worse. Choosing the tool that best suits your specific needs and projects would be best.
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