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Tech-Talk: WEB TOOL - Asana.com For Project
Management
Intermediate
Do you ever want to collaborate on projects
with colleagues and need a way to keep track of who's working on what...
and the progress each person is making?
 Group
efforts can involve whole teams of people, both inside your organization and
outside.
Even if you have a defined goal and know
who is responsible for each part, it can turn into a mess of back-and-forth
email communications, not knowing the progress other members are making.
Project management software can be expensive, have steep learning curves
and people have different preferences in the tools they use. So how do you
manage these tasks?
We discovered a web-based option that we'll call a "lite" project
management (PM) tool that includes the must-have options -- AND has a free
level for up to 15 team members so that you can stay organized and get your
work done at no additional cost.
Asana
 www.asana.com
is a web-based tool that gives you one place to create projects with tasks,
assign work to team members, and share ideas and updates.
While it may not be filled with some of the
bells and whistles that other PM tools offer, it has all the functionality
you need to stay connected to your team and is simple and easy to use.
Asana's tag line is "teamwork without email" --
so that you don't have to rely on reading, writing, sorting messages
related to each group task.
Interestingly enough, Asana was founded by
Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and ex-engineer Justin Rosenstein,
both of whom worked on improving the productivity of employees at Facebook.
The creators of this tool like to refer to it as more of a "teamwork communications
manager," rather than a traditional project
management tool. All communication in Asana is actionable and tied to the
work that needs to be done. In one place you'll see the critical
information of:
· Project
list
· Tasks
within each individual project that can be broken down into subsections
· Who
is responsible for each task
· The
due date of a task and if has been done
· Notes
and comments from team members
· Links
to corresponding documents (in GoogleDocs or Dropbox)
Asana Lets
You:
· Assign
team members to be part of a project or just be designated to
"follow" it (and receive periodic updates).
· Create
templates for recurring projects to save time in the future.
· Archive
completed projects so that you can save the history if needed.
· Work
on-the-go from anywhere ... because it is web-based.
· Connect
via iPhone and Android smart phones with an app.
· Receive
email updates to give you a heads-up when task due dates are approaching or
a team member has completed a phase of the project.
· Invite
guests and give them special permissions to be assigned tasks or just view
projects.
Sometimes
with free tools, you "get what you pay for." But even though we
consider Asana to be a lite-weight tool, it is robust enough for project
planning and working together as a team.
 However,
there are benefits to upgrading to a paid version. When you upgrade, you'll
be able to use it if your organization has 15 or more members who you want
to create projects, work within teams and have unlimited guests (not
officially part of your group).
To stay productive, you can even use Asana
by yourself to get a handle on your own projects and to-do list items. Take
a look at www.Asana.com.
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Nice share
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