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ASANA - any new reactions
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Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 6, 2015 at 02:15 PM
Hi, all,
My organization is seriously considering using Asana for team collaboration and communication. I am wondering if anyone can give me some commentary about how it is working these days. I know Ken has some issues with the tagging system. Anything else that’s troublesome of concerning?
Any insights will be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Steve Z.
Posted by Ken
Aug 6, 2015 at 03:53 PM
Hi Steve,
Funny you should ask. I logged in the other day, and there was a message about some new changes to the left panel. Unfortunately, the message box disappeared before I could click on the link, and there was no post on their blog, so I cannot tell if it was an errant message. Overall, I have not seen any further actions on the tag issue. My project that have tags still have a tag panel, and those that did not have them before their changes still do not. If you rely on tags, then this should be looked at in detail to make sure it is not a deal breaker. I just do not understand why they would cripple tags, as it is a powerful feature.
Having said my gripe, I will say that Asana has still been running fine for me, but I am not using it in a shared environment, and I have moved away from using it on my mobile devices. I am now using Todoist for personal use. Despite its own issues, it has a much more friendly mobile interface, and for personal use, that is a key issue for me. I still use Asana at work for task management. I have yet to find a suitable replacement, but there seem to be more and more competitors out there. Asana offer a number of nice features that I find useful, like their Today/Upcoming/Later filtering, the ability to assign a task to multiple projects, and the ability to add “subsections” which can be handy.
What frustrates me is the somewhat cluttered UI. Tags and projects share identical looking markers that are mixed together in no particular order for a task. It is hard to quickly glance down a list of tasks and make sense of these markers, especially if they have been reduced to fit. I appreciate the desire of a task to occupy only one line, but if it comes at the expense of readability, then I would prefer two lines. Also, while subtasks offer a great amount of flexibility, knowing they exist is often a challenge as there is no marker to identify their presence. Asana also has an unusual annoyance in that if you backspace to delete text identifying a task, the cursor does not stop at the left margin. It keeps deleting the line above like a word processor.
I still recommend that people give Asana some consideration as it does offer a number of useful features. And if the quirks do not bother you or impede your workflow, then it can be a good option. But, if you are looking at options and have a budget, then I think that there are some other options that might be suitable alternatives. I cannot recall specific names because I was not really interested in paying up to $20/mo. out of my own pocket for task management. I can handle a reasonable yearly fee like Todoist or Toodledo, but the cost/benefit analysis did not seem to make sense with many of these products in my situation.
Give it a try and post your impressions and questions. I think it would make for an interesting discussion.
Good luck,
—Ken
P.S. If you read their blog, and Trello’s as well, you will find that they are focused more on lifestyle tips/articles rather than product roadmaps and features. Seems to be the marketing FOTM.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Aug 7, 2015 at 12:24 AM
My son (budding movie director) uses Asana for his project management work, and seems to like it. On the other hand, he’s not a natural CRIMPer and tends to stick with something that works once he’s discovered it.
I would strongly suggest taking a good look at Slack before opting for Asana. We’re thinking seriously of moving over to Slack after experimenting with various other platforms such as HipChat, Skype et al.
Or you could set up your Very Own system, using some of the clever WordPress-based options around on the web. I can’t remember the last one I took a look at, but I was quite impressed. In fact, Automattic themselves recently released the WordPress template/theme they use for their own in-house collaboration (P2 - here it is: http://p2theme.com/).
Cheers,
Bill
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 8, 2015 at 11:28 AM
Thanks for the feedback, Bill and Ken. Tagging isn’t that important for us, and we are looking for project and task management even more than communications. As far as I can tell from a quick look, Slack is more of a communication tool, not so much a project/task management organizer, so it wouldn’t be the best choice for us.
Some of the other options I’ve looked at:
Trello: Nice tool, but a little too particularized. Doesn’t provide the big overview of what everyone is working on (unless I missed that feature).
Samepage: I like this tool, tried using it with a group I volunteer with, and found mixed results as far as people taking to it.
Hackpad: Another intriguing tool, but I think it would be difficult to get everyone on board using it.
Have I missed other options?
Thanks, again!
Steve Z.
Posted by dan7000
Aug 8, 2015 at 10:39 PM
The thing I don’t like about Asana is that there are no durations for tasks. It’s hard to see how you could do project management without durations.
Collaborative project managers with durations that I think are interesting are:
- hiveflux - very collaboration-oriented, lots of good options
- iqtell - by far the most compex task manager out there, not too collaboration focused
- nirvana and nozbe - both allow you to share and assign projects but otherwise are basically GTD task managers
- wrike - if I was doing project management for a team, this is what I would use. Closest to MS Project but online and with the obligatory collaboration / commenting features
If durations aren’t important, check out
- meistertask - their marketing is that everyone is converting from trello to them
- kitovu - I like it because it’s client and team focused. might use this instead of wrike if it had durations
- moo.do - yes it’s gimmiky but they are adding features so fast that it reminds me of workflowy’s beginnings