How to Hack Asana for Project Management
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Using Asana for project management gives you a flexible, relatively easy to use system to manage a really diverse range of projects.
From students to seasoned project management professionals, lots of people use Asana to manage work of all kinds. It can handle projects at all sorts of levels of complexity.
But since you’re here, you probably already knew that. What we’re going to be covering in this article is where Asana can be more limiting for PMs, and what you can do to work around that.
We’re project management experts here at Visor, and we’re big fans of Asana. We even integrate with it so you can connect your Asana data to Visor’s beautiful, complex dashboards and alternative view options. Get started for free!
Is the term “hack” a little 2010s? Maybe, but these tips and tricks will help you get the absolute most out of your tech stack and help your projects come to life.
Asana for Project Management – Limitations and How You Can Hack Them
Asana is a great tool (we use it frequently!) but it does have some limitations from the perspective of a project manager. Here are some of the more commonly-cited limitations and what we’d suggest you do instead to get the functionality you need.
Portfolio Management
Although Asana does give you the ability to manage multiple projects as a portfolio (aka project portfolio management), it charges you $24.99 per user per month for this functionality.
For users looking to get an overview of all the projects they are managing this is a really ill-fitting pricing model.
Most of the time, only a handful of users will actually need the portfolio management capability, so paying to upgrade to the Asana Advanced tier for every single user often makes no sense, and is prohibitively expensive.
The good news is you can use Visor to integrate with Asana and give you project portfolio management capabilities for all your Asana projects, without having to upgrade all your Asana users and break your budget (see Visor pricing).
Portfolio visualizations made in Visor using your live, real-time Asana data can be shared with anyone, with no additional cost. These visualizations look stunning, and are an ideal way to keep your stakeholders updated, informed, and engaged with your portfolio of projects.
When you’re managing lots of projects simultaneously, and focused on ensuring resourcing is adequate and optimized you’ll need to start taking capacity management in Asana seriously, to ensure you avoid team burnout and don’t need to regularly employ project schedule compression techniques.
A Project Portfolio Dashboard I Created In Visor Using Live Real-Time Data From My Asana Projects:
You can also use Visor to create portfolio Gantt charts, timelines, kanban boards, and spreadsheet views. These can all be shared with your stakeholders, and you can even incorporate data from other apps like Jira and Salesforce as needed. See below.
A Table View In Visor With Integrated Asana and Salesforce Data:
Complex Project Structures:
For more complex projects with deep hierarchies and dependencies, Asana’s structure can be limiting, because it’s primarily designed for more straightforward project workflows. And when you’re using a free plan, you won’t have access to dependencies at all.
Hack it: You can use Asana’s given options to make your workflow reflect more complex work tasks, even if you can’t create complex structures of dependencies like you might in a tool like Jira. Using Asana’s card customization views, you can actually create your own dependencies field. Just create a field for your Asana cards that connects to other items, then add in a “Blocked by” or “Blocking” tag.
This simple workaround gives you DIY dependencies on free plans. For more in-depth dependencies on plans where you do have access to the function, you can add additional to-do list items in the description sections to reflect more complex layers of work.
Customization Limitations:
Customization options, while available, are not as extensive in Asana as in some other tools. For example, custom fields and task templates can be a bit limited in scope. If you’re looking for more detailed options, you’ll need to think outside the box.
Hack it: The best way to handle this is to get creative with your Asana tasks’ description fields. Create a simple template for yourself that contains the information you’d like to include on each card, such as granular hand-off information, meta data, sub-due dates, etc. Keep it somewhere you can easily copy and paste to reuse it again and again.
Limited Advanced Reporting:
While Asana offers basic reporting and dashboards, it lacks advanced reporting features and customizability found in some other project management tools. If you need more nuanced reporting, you might struggle with Asana alone.
Hack it: You can work around this by bringing in external tools and integrations that cover this gap. Visor works to bring your Asana data into a more complex project management infrastructure, allowing you to create dashboards and reports using Visor dashboard view, and surfacing information that would otherwise stay locked up in Asana. Or worse: manual reports.
Some users resort to integrating Asana with Google Sheets to get their data in order and ready for reporting. But this really just gives you quite a clunky and unpolished set of charts. Not something you’re going to feel fully confident in sharing with your most powerful stakeholders.
Hence, many Asana users integrate with a tool like Visor instead.
Visor’s Dashboard View Using Integrated Asana Data:
Notifications Overload:
I know that I personally find Asana’s notification system overwhelming, especially at times where I’m involved in multiple projects and receive too many updates.
Hack it: Asana actually does let you alter your notification preferences in their settings, and they offer a guide on how to set that up. I personally choose to only receive notifications when I’m tagged in something, because I otherwise prefer to check the app myself. However, if you like a digest style email, that’s simple to arrange, too.
Gantt Chart Limitations:
Asana provides a Timeline view starting at the first paid tier, but it’s not as fully featured or flexible as dedicated Gantt chart tools. Some project managers may find it insufficient for detailed project planning. And the free tier doesn’t offer it in the first place.
Overall native Asana Gantt charts just look a bit uninspiring and undefined. It’s very easy for an Asana Gantt chart to fade into the background, rather than make an engaging impact with you, or whoever you are sharing it with.
A native Gantt chart in Asana:
Hack it: If you have access to a paid version, you’ll have access to Asana’s timeline/Gantt chart views. Are they as robust as some of the other dedicated roadmapping and full-service project management tools out there?
No, but if you simplify your project and keep dependencies and subtasks to the descriptions of your items, you can make it work. If you’re using the free tier, though, you’re simply out of luck without integrating Asana with a tool like Visor’s and using its Gantt chart view.
Compare the rather bland and uninformative native Asana Gantt chart above, to the Gantt chart below which I created in Visor, using live data from Asana:
An Asana-integrated Visor Gantt chart
User Permission Settings:
The permissions and roles system in Asana can be somewhat basic, which might not meet the needs of larger organizations with more granular access control requirements.
Hack it: The best way to work around this problem is by making use of multiple teams and projects. That way you’ll have more control over who has access to which workflows. It’s not the same as changing full user permissions, but it will cover the gap with minimal extra effort.
However, if you integrate Visor with Asana, you’ll be able to share Asana-integrated charts at a variety of permission levels.
Visor’s permission settings
Limited Automation:
Asana’s automation capabilities, while useful, aren’t as advanced as those found in some other project management tools that offer more robust workflow automation. Even with drag-and-drop ease of use, Asana trails behind a lot of other project management tools in terms of how many clicks it takes to get things done. Especially when it’s a repetitive task.
Hack it: Integrations to the rescue yet again! This is a perfect use case for Visor, which integrates with Asana and unlocks a world of features.
Cost for Premium Features:
Let’s face it: a lot of what I’ve listed above is really only a major limitation on Asana’s Personal plan. Most of the more advanced features and functionalities require a premium subscription, which can be costly for smaller teams or organizations.
Hack it: If Asana’s free plan doesn’t cut it, but you don’t have the budget for one of their paid tiers, you’ll need to find a free or lower-cost project management tool. We’ve looked through some other mainstream project management tools and have done a price comparison.
Even with these limitations, there’s still tons Asana can do as-is, so if you’re bumping into problems hopefully these workarounds help bridge the gap.
Are you using Asana for project management?
If you are, I genuinely hope these tips and tricks help you get the most out of it, no matter what tier of plan you’re using or how big your project might be. Asana is a fabulous tool for project management, and these hacks help address some of the limitations that frustrate many regular users.
By the way, Visor is also a fabulous project management tool that helps you connect your people and your data in one place – no matter how many apps your team is using.
Visor’s two-way integration with Asana keeps both apps up to date while helping you manage the eternity of every project, all in one place. We’re just the thing for when your Eng team is in Jira and your Marketing team is in Asana and you’re stuck in the middle trying to connect everyone. Try us for free today.
