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.

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.

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

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.

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

It seems like the list of new options grows. I had not heard of half of these programs, so I appreciate the list. But, the more I evaluate these programs, the more they are starting to look like variations on a single flavor or two. It seems that the key to most of these apps is the chat feature, and while communication is important, and everybody want to be the latest "email killer", I find many of them wanting. Perhaps it is because I do not fit into their target user profile, which always seems to be some creative 20-30yo working at some startup in a loft of an old warehouse? I have no objection to tools being created for this market, but I suspect there are a lot of us who do not fit that profile. I sometimes want to call these programs "bubble software" because they only work if you are inside their software bubble. How do these people interact with somebody outside of the company if they have abandoned their email? In trying to find reviews of these products, I cam across a Verge video discussing Slack as the latest program to make email obsolete. Thankfully folks in the comment section took them to task for providing an advertisement video rather than a review. It seems that every "reviewer" is so focused on being the person who discovered the program that killed email that they cannot even begin to give a useful evaluation of the product. Is email really that horrible and outdated? I do think that some of these programs offer good feature sets with some useful tools, but why not sell on the programs' merits, rather than join the queue of companies that all seem to be focusing on selling the same tired claim of killing email? It is the LCD of electronic communication that is neither hardware or software dependent. That is quite an accomplishment, and an amazingly useful feature as well. I am curious as to Steve's selection and how it is received.

--Ken


--Ken

Continued thanks for the additional comments.

Our needs are not too complex. We really do not need project management in the traditional sense of large scale projects balancing a number of necessary steps, tasks and milestones. More, we just need a common list of projects, who's responsible, when are they due. Having the ability to comment is a plus, not a requirement.

Asana remains the front runner. What appeals to me about it is that each of us can use it to the extent we'd like. So if someone only wants to see the macro list of projects and what they are responsible for, then that's all they need to do. But if they'd like to use it to micromanage themselves, they can. Also, it seems more intuitive to me. That is, it looks the way a task manager should (in my view, maybe not in my colleagues'). So I think there is a better chance they'll take to it.

I agree, Ken, that it is silly that they make their major pitch the end of e-mail when, (a) that's clearly not going to happen, and (b) they include tools for incorporating e-mail into he workflow. (Like receiving e-mail alerts from Asana and forwarding e-mail into Asana to become a task -- both of which are key features that make Asana more attractive.)

I appreciate the other suggestions. We'll check them out.

Steve Z.

Steve,

I came across this today and thought you might be interested: http://www.dobambam.com/ .

--Ken

I also found this review of BamBam! to be useful: http://www.noupe.com/business-online/bambam-the-one-and-only-collaboration-tool-for-people-who-really-need-to-get-things-done-79677.html if you have any interest in the product.

--Ken

That does look interesting, Ken - thanks.

Although it appears to resemble Podio, which definitely takes the prize for being the most baffling piece of over-engineered project management software I've ever encountered.

(Of course I'd love to be convinced otherwise by Podiophiles...)

Certainly worth a look.

Cheers!
Bill

I appreciate the BamBam referral. However, our executive director made the decision to go with Asana after looking at some of the other options I presented to her. So far so good. We continue to uncover useful features with Asana, none of which are likely to be proprietary, but its quite a nice collection.

Of course, the real test will be to see how well it scales when we have hundreds of tasks and dozens of projects. I will try to remember to post updates as we go along.

Steve Z.

MadaboutDana wrote:

That does look interesting, Ken - thanks.

Although it appears to resemble Podio, which definitely takes the prize
for being the most baffling piece of over-engineered project management
software I've ever encountered.

(Of course I'd love to be convinced otherwise by Podiophiles...)

Certainly worth a look.

Cheers!

I have felt the same way about Podio, Bill. I know that it is flexible, but every time I try to sit down with a blank canvas and create a work space, it seems that the tools that I desire are not available. I know that they offer some canned templates, but those never seem to meet my needs. I would write it off completely, but folks keep saying what a wonderful program it is. Am I missing something, or are my needs just beyond what they offer?

--Ken

Bill

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I appreciate the BamBam referral. However, our executive director made
the decision to go with Asana after looking at some of the other options
I presented to her. So far so good. We continue to uncover useful
features with Asana, none of which are likely to be proprietary, but its
quite a nice collection.

Of course, the real test will be to see how well it scales when we have
hundreds of tasks and dozens of projects. I will try to remember to post
updates as we go along.

Steve Z.

Thanks for the update, Steve. I could not resist and opened up an account with BamBam! last night. There are parts that I like, but their documentation is a bit sparse. I would like to be able to have a list of tasks from various projects that I want to focus on, but I cannot seem to find a way to either search or filter across projects to do so. If this is not possible, then any possible consideration as an Asana replacement would not be an option. I work on a number of projects, and having flagged tasks from all of them be visible is essential to my work flow. But do keep us posted on your progress. I was tempted to join that Google+ forum, but I am not currently pushing Asana to its limits, so joining does not seem urgent. but it is good to know that there is a place to discuss the program as Asana has no forums.

--Ken

It's my 1st post.

Sorry if I didn't understand question correctly.

Check
Producteev.com (free collaborating and task management system. Crossplatform, better that Asana for me),
Planfix.com(very flexible with intersting approach to orginize data)
Pyrus.com

Regards,
Andy

I did extensive research on many task management systems including Asana and Teamwork.com was the winner for my needs.

After using it for nearly a year, I am very pleased with it.