When it comes to successful project management, there are three C’s that are essential to tick: Clarity, Collaboration, and Communication. Your team needs to be able to have a clear visual understanding of larger projects, from a wider systemic perspective, down to their role-assigned tasks, and those of team members. Only having a fraction of the picture leaves projects vulnerable to costly errors, oversights and gaps.
Collaboration is also vital. Team members need to collaborate in real time, being able to view and access each other’s work, track task progress and forward any important project data across a platform ecosystem, so it’s accessible to everyone involved without delays.
Lastly, communication is the foundation of any successful project. Being able to effortlessly communicate without relying on unstable video calls and meetings and unstreamlined communication channels can be the difference between meeting a project deadline ahead of time and timelines bloating and stretching into endless scope creep.
Master your clarity, collaboration and communication and you’ll master your project management. Asana, as one of the most established and extensive project management software solutions, is the ideal fit for any project (of any scope and size) and any business. Let’s take a closer look at what makes Asana easily one of the best project management tools on the market.
Unpacking Asana’s Core Features
At its core, Asana offers advanced but accessible functionalities that make project tracking, management and completion seamless, all on an intuitive platform. Aside from offering an easy-to-follow workflow interface, Asana also offers numerous integration and customisation opportunities. Here are Asana’s core features for impeccable project management.
Timelines
Asana has a freestanding timelines feature solely dedicated to representing project and task deadlines as well as dependent tasks and deliverables across a visualised ecosystem. Dates are amendable and targets and milestones are easily adjustable, ensuring your whole team stays informed of any changes to final deadlines.
Role Assignment
Asana’s Role Assignment feature is one of its most powerful and important capabilities. Using role assignment, you can assign roles to team members, designate projects, create tasks and sub-tasks and create deadlines to break larger projects down into smaller, more manageable targets.
Gantt Charts
Gantt Charts aggregates and breaks down project timelines, statuses and dependencies in a detailed but clear manner, allowing you to identify critical objectives, flag potential risks, make data-driven decisions and adust timelines and/or project outcomes as required.
Dependencies
Understanding relationships and interdependencies between tasks and deliverables is crucial to staying on track. The dependency feature lets you build and connect relationships and hierarchies between tasks, ensuring that certain tasks can only begin once others have been successfully completed. This keeps project progression streamlined and on track, minimising the risk of errors and delays.
Budgeting
Set project budgets and track all of your ongoing project expenses in real time to ensure your project stays within its allotted budget. Adjust budgets and expenses as you need.
Integrations
A key strength of Asana is its extensive integration prowess. Asana integrates with an array of other useful software tools, including (but not limited to) Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Salesforce, making it possible to share documents and add important data, integrating it into your existing project management workflows.
Automation
Asana also offers advanced automation capabilities across its platform. Using Asana’s automation, you can create rules that automatically push tasks through different project stages or phases and notify team members and other users for review, feedback and/or approval, keeping project progress efficient and on time.
The Asana Advantage
One of Asana’s key drivers is its flexibility. Its project templates are customisable, as are its project views and settings, which can be tailored to fit specific project and team requirements. Being able to switch between different project views (including boards, timelines, and lists) makes it easy for everyone to stay on top of requirements.
Collaboration is another valuable functionality that makes Asana stand out. Asana makes it easy to assign tasks, track task progress and communicate with other team members in real time, allowing everyone the same access and insight into task and project statuses.
Lastly, Asana’s powerful automation capabilities make it simple to add project customisations, amendments, triggers, and notifications. Asana’s Workflow Builder feature provides rules, templates and forms that automate tasks and make room for customisation of management operations for specific projects.
The Hidden Potential of Asana
While Asana is undoubtedly one of the most advanced project management software solutions available, its business potential goes even further beyond seamless project execution. Under the right guidance, Asana can go from a project platform to a key business asset, capable of driving strategic, data-driven insights for enhancing top-of-line strategies and decision-making.
With help from the right partner, you can boost your ROI and strategic usage of Asana, making selecting the right implementation partner for Asana a crucial decision. At CloudSmiths, we leverage our granular data engineering capabilities and insights with our extensive experience in Asana to build custom workflows and tailored solutions across business use cases.
