As a marketer, you’re likely to need to organize yourself and your team. In this review, we’ll go over one tool you can use. It’s called Asana and it’s one of the most popular project managers available on the market today.
Not surprising, given that its focus on simplicity was a combined effort of creators who trace their roots from both Google (Justin Rosenstein) and Facebook (Dustin Moskovitz).
Today, these are two of the biggest tech conglomerates in the world…but even Google & Facebook were startups at one point. Perhaps it’s this understanding of how fledgling companies operate that led to the creation of Asana.
Regardless of the reason, I’m personally very grateful.
Here’s why—
Features
★★★★
I used to run my business through email alone. It’s how most of us start. But it can quickly become overwhelming and difficult to track…especially when working with multiple projects.
Asana simplifies things by organizing everything in one spot. Their features are straightforward and all are designed to keep track of projects and the tasks within those projects.
Some of my favorite features include:
- Linking directly to other existing tasks (via hyperlink) so that you can get immediate access to another supporting task.
- You can easily add followers to particular task lists with a featured tick button on the side to show whether or not the task has been completed.
- Tasks can easily be broken down into subtasks, where you can easily assign each to individual team members.
Asana has a superb built-in search function. It makes it really easy to find tasks (including past tasks that have already been marked complete).
These various features work together to define a very specific workflow for every member of your team. It categorizes everything according to individual projects so that you don’t have to read through multiple, jumbled email threads as well.
Ease of Use
★★★★
When you log-in to Asana, it takes you a collated task list of all the stuff that you have to do. It’s essentially a to-do list that brings together all the tasks assigned to you so you can easily prioritize, organize or tick off items that you’ve already accomplished.
The left side bar will have all your tasks organized in a single column. This is fully customizable depending on your project name and title. You can also add the followers for a specific project, task or subtask (which you can easily assign) so that you don’t clutter your team member’s Asana pages with useless to-dos.
The basics are fairly simple. But I do think that it can be simplified a little bit more. It’s particularly hard to navigate through and learn Asana basics. The grid style, drop downs and layouts could take some getting used to, but like any new tool, it gets easier with practice.
Design
★★★★
Overall, I really like Asana’s “All-On-One-Page” design. At a glance I can see what projects I have, what tasks within those projects need to be done and even the details of one of those specific tasks…all without have to click around. It’s all on one screen and keeps things pretty handy.
Value for Money
★★★★★
Our team has been using Asana since September of 2013 but we have only ever needed to use their free version. The price is definitely right! In fact, we dropped our $50 a month Basecamp account to move to Asana. The best part is that we didn’t move because of the money… we moved because it had better functionality. The fact that it’s free? That’s just a bonus!
There is a paid version. If you happen to work with a bigger team (it’s only free for up to 15 team members), or you need more privacy options, then it might make sense to use the paid version.
Dependability
★★★★
In case you run into any trouble, you can get in touch with their customer support, of course. You’ll get a reply, maybe two or three days after. It’s not as fast as we may like, but then again, we’re using their service for free.
Down-times can be expected but that’s inevitable from any cloud-based service. Tech happens. And in terms of exporting data, Asana regularly backs up your files and even makes it easy for you to export your files and data should you need to.
All in all, if you’re working with a small team and you want to maximize productivity, this is a great tool to have. It’s free, it’s efficient, and very effective. What have you got to lose?
If you have any questions about Asana or have other project managers you'd like to recommend, please leave a comment!
– Mercer
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